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THE UNION, 



PAST AND FUTURE: 



HOW IT WORKS, 



£ND 



HOW TO SAVE IT. 



BY A ^CITIZEN OF VIRGINIA. 



I 
THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED.] 



there is surely n» °reater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things. Dangers are no more ight, 
if thev once seem light, and more dangers have deceived men than forced them. Nay, it were better to meet some dan 
gers halfway, though they come nothing near, than to keep too long a watch upon their approaches, fori a ma» 
watch too long, it is odds he will fall asleep.— Baton. 



WASHINGTON: 

PRINTED BY JOHN T» TOWERS* 

1850. 



G 



THE UNION, 

PAST AND FUTURE: 

HOW IT WORKS, AND HOW TO SAVE IT. 



The time has come, when it behooves every Southern man o consider the best means of pre- 
serving the Union which he loves, and the rights and honor which are yet dearer. Sixty years 
have passed since the Northern and Southern States 'entered into a treaty for "the common de- 
fence and general welfare." We joined that league as equals : its strictly denned powers were to 
be exercised for the equal good of all the parties, and its benefits and burdens were to be equally 
shared. But our allies at the North have grown strong under the fostering protection of this 
great treaty, and are no longer content with the equal conditions upon which it was formed. 
They have perverted it from its original character, not only wielding the granted powers for sec- 
tional and oppressive purposes, but assuming every doubtful power for their exclusive advantage. 
In this spirit, they have advanced far in a series of measures, which, if unresisted, must end in 
the overthrow of our slave institutions. But it cannot be doubted that a free people, still untamed 
to the yoke of oppression and the stamp of inferiority, will resist such assaults. The South has 
at stake, not merely the fourteen hundred millions of dollars, the value of her slave propeity, but 
all of honor and of happiness that civilization and society can give. To count the means of re- 
sistance, the relative strength of the opponents, the value of what we must hazard, and the surest 
wavs of preserving the Union in its original equality, is the object of this Essay. 

The history of the causes of the present crisis is the history of ever-growing demands on the 
part of the North, and of as constant concessions from the South. A hasty glance at the past 
will aid us to divine the future. 

Virginia owned an immense territory to the northwest of the Ohio river, acquired by the same 
titles with the soil of the Old Dominion itself—the royal grants, her treasure, and her blood. More 
than one of her ancient colonial charters covered this whole domain, and in 1778, at her own 
expense, she fitted out an expedition for its conquest. Her gallant son, George Rogers Clarke, at 
the head of a small but daring band, penetrated hundreds of miles through a savage and hostile 
country, expelled the English, subdued the Indians, and conquered for his mother State an em : 
pire larger than the Austrian. For the sake of the Union, Virginia gave up this fine country, 
larger than all the Southern States of the Old Thirteen, and by "an act of grosser fatuity " as 
Randolph said, "than ever poor old Lear or the Knight of La Mancha was guilty of," she suf- 
fered her own citizens to be excluded from its benefit ; for it was then a slaveholding territory, 
and the ordinance of 1787, abolishing slavery there, was passed chiefly by Northern votes, and 
that, as Mr. Madison said, " without the shadow of constitutional authority." It was a country 
well suited for slavery, for even so late as 1806 we find a convention of the inhabitants of Indi- 
ana petitioning for its temporary introduction, and a committee of the House of Representatives 
reporting through their chairman, Mr. Garnett, of Virginia, in favor of their prayer. But while 
Virginia was guilty of this suicidal generosity, she annexed one condition for her own advantage, 
that not more than five States should be formed out of this territory, so as to preserve a due ba- 
lance of political power in the Union. Yet even this condition the North has violated, and 
22,336 square miles of its area, more than the average size of all the free States east of the Ohio, 
have gone to constitute the future State of Minnesota. 

This was the first step, and the next was at the formation of the present Constitution, when a 
contest arose as to the ratio of representation. Should the South have as many representatives 
in proportion to her. population as the North > It was just and right that she should. The Fede- 
ral Government had no concern with the relations between blacks and whites, the different classes 
of her population. It had no right to inquire whether the negro was a slave or free. The slaves 
were a better population than the free riegroes, and if the latter were to be counted at their full 
number in the apportionment of representation, so ought the former. The right could not be ; 
refused, because the slaves were naturally or legally unequal to the whites, for so are the free ne- ■ 
groes. It could not be refused because they have no political rights, for neither have free negroes, , 
paupers, women, or children. They are an essential part of the population ; if absent, their ' 



places must be filled by other laborers, and if they are property as well as population, it is 
an additional reason for giving their owners the security of full representation for them. But 
the South, as usual, yielded to Northern exorbitance, and agreed that five slaves should count 
only as three free negroes. Therefore, instead of 105 Representatives in Congress, we have 
only 91. 

But the free States are not content with this, and now propose to take away twenty-one more 
of our Representatives. They say that the right of representation for three-fifths of our slave 
population is a sufficient reason for refusing admission into the Union to any new slave State ; 
and Massachusetts has proposed, by a solemn legislative resolution, to amend the Constitution so 
as to deprive us of this guarantied representation. Public meetings and eminent men have ap- 
proved of her proposal. 

In return for this surrender of her rights, the South inserted into the Constitution two stipu^ 
lations in her own favor. The first provided that direct taxes should be proportioned amongst 
the States in the ratio of their representation. According to this provision, we ought now to 
pay a little more than one-third of the taxes ; we actually pay, under the present system, over 
three- fourths. The amount levied from customs since the foundation of the Government has 
been about 1047 millions of dollars ; and had these duties been paid in the ratio which the 
Constitution indicates as just and proper, the South would have paid 442, and the North 605. 
But, as we shall see hereafter, the slave States have really paid 798 millions, and the free States 
only 249. Therefore, the South has gained nothing by this stipulation in return for her loss of 
representation. 

The other stipulation in favor of the South was, that " no person held to service or labor 
in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or 
regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of 
the party to whom such service or labor may be due." This provision rests for its due fulfilment, 
not merely upon the Federal Government, but, like a treaty stipulation between distinct nations, 
must be carried into effect by the municipal regulations of the parties, and their comity and good 
feeling. Yet what has it been worth to the South? So far from executing this clause, and 
"delivering up" the runaway slaves, the free States refuse to pass any efficient law to that end in 
Congress, and such is their state of feeling, and such their domestic laws, that any federal law, 
even if enacted, could not be executed. In their own Governments, they make it a criminal 
offence, punishable by fine and imprisonment, for any officer, and in some States, tor any citizen, 
to assist in seizing or 'delivering up" a fugitive slave. Their whites and their free negroes 
assemble in mobs to rescue the slave from the master, who is bold enough to capture him, and 
then accusing him of the riot they made themselves, throw him into a felon's jail, and load him 
with fetters, as Pennsylvania has recently done by a respectable citizen of Maryland. When 
Troutman, of Kentucky, pursued his slaves into the town of Marshall, in Michigan, he was sur- 
rounded by a mob, led by the most influential citizens, who declared that " thovgh the law was 
in his favor, yet public sentiment must and should supersede it," and a resolution was tumultu- 
ously adopted that "these Kentuckians shall not remove from this place these slaves by moral, 
physical, or legal force." A magistrate fined Troutman $100 for the trespass in attempting to 
arrest his slaves ; and he was recognized to appear at the next Circuit Court for drawing a pistol 
on a negro who was forcing the door of his roe-m ! But this was mild treatment compared with 
the fate of the lamented Kennedy, of Hagerstown. When he followed his slave into Carlisle, 
Pennsylvania, and was peaceably, and with his own consent, bringing him away, an infuriated 
mob of whites and free blacks, incited by the Professor of a College, assaulted and brutally mur- 
dered him ! It is estimated by Mr. Clingman that the whole loss to the South in fugitive Slaves 
is not less than fifteen millions of dollars. Mr. Butler, of the Senate, estimated the annual lose 
to the South at $200,000, and more recent statements make it probable that he was under the 
true amount. The philanthropy of the North does not extend to voluntary tree negro emigrants 
from the South, but is confined to the' runaway slaves, whom it can force by fear to work at im- 
moderately low wages. 

So much for the value of the second stipulation, which the slave States accepted as an equiva • 
lent for their loss of representation. After the adoption of the Constitution, there was a consid- 
erable pause in Northern encroachments. There were still a few slaves in all the free States, 
except Massachusetts ; and many of their citizens were deeply and openly interested in the slave 
trade until 1808, when it was made piracy. It was notorious that James D'WolfT, who repre- 
sented Rhode Island in the Senate of the United States from 1821 to 1825, made an immense 
fortune by this traffic. The Brazil and Cuba Markets (as may be seen proved in the Wise cor- 
respondence) are still largely supplied with captive Africans by Yankee vessels ; but this is now 
a foreign and secret interest. The North was not ready for a renewed attack until the approach 
of the fourth census, in 1820. Under the process of abolition and sales to the South, her slaves 
had diminished from over 40,000 in 1790, to about 9,000, and these were virtually free. Her 
etrength in Congress had increased at the same time. In 1790, the South had as many votes in 
the Senate, and only eight less in the House'. In 1817, the North had a majority of two in the 
former body, and twenty-five in the latter. It was accordingly on the application of Missouri in 



1 S19-'20 for admission into the Union, that the pretension was first set up that no new slave State 
should enter the Confederacy. A clause prohibiting slavery was inserted in the bill for the ad- 
mission of Missouri, when it became apparent that her people would reject such a bill, it passed, 
and with a government regularly organized according to all the constitut.onal precedents, would 
remain without the Union as a separate, independent State, unless the Federal authority under- 
took to subdue her, and convulsed the country by a civil war. In this state of the question, the 
South had only to remain firm, and the North would be forced to yield; but, as usual, the South 
was weak enough to retreat from her ground, and in her love for the Union, she submitted to a 
provision forever prohibiting slavery in all that part of the Territory of Louisiana (except Mis- 
souri itself) which lies north of 36° 30', the southern boundary of Virginia and Kentucky. 1 he 
South thus lost, without any equivalent, five sixths of what was already a slave territory, pur- 
chased by the common treasure. She retained only 110,000 square miles for the emigration of 
her own citizen?, and surrendered 9fi5,000 to the North. r 

Yet even this so-called compromise, forced upon us by Northern votes, is now spurned by the 
free States. They have derived all the possible benefit from it on this side ot the Rocky moun- 
tains, and they refuse us the poor advantage, which it would secure, of 204,383 square miles out 
of 867,541 on the other side! 

From this time, the Northern ascendency was- confirmed, if not m the present, yet in the tuture 
distribution of political power, which would result from her overwhelming superiority in ternt0 / y - 
The abolition societies sprung up with new vigor, and the halls of Congress were made the field 
Of incendary agitation. Fanaticism, both in and out of Congress, denied that slaves were pro- 
perty, and in the debate on }he Mariany DWuterive case, claims for compensation tor their loss 
in the public service were opposed on this ground. The whole country was pervaded by ♦• a 
politico religious fanaticism," which, in the language of Randolph of Roanoke, " has insinuated 
itself wherever it can to the disturbance of the public peace, the Loosening of the keystone of the 
Constitution, and the undermining of tho foundation on which the arch of our Union rests. 
Demagogues of either party bid for the votes of these fanatics by assaults upon Southern rights, 
and the anti-slavery feeling, thus stimulated, has spread through the masses, and grown too strong 
to be controlled. Hear again the prophetic wisdom of the Virginia orator, uttered twenty-five 
years since, on this very subject: " Men commence with the control of things— they put events m 
motion, but after a very little while events hurry them away, and they are borne along with a 
swift fatality that no human sagacity or power can foresee or control." So has it been with this 
anti slavery movement. Its leaders then assured us that no harm was intended, and our rights 
would never be invaded. Mr. Burgess, of Rhode Island, one of the most distinguished Northern 
men of his day, said, after an elaborate argument to show the South how little she had to fear, 
" From neither of these classes, therefore, have Southern men anything to apprehend, or to pro- 
duce excitement. The enthusiasts will not disturb them, for they have not the power to do it. The 
philanthropists will not do it, for they will not, for any supposed good, violate even the legal rights 
of others. From the politicians they have nothing to apprehend, because they will not only not 
break the laws of their country for any purpose whatever, or better the condition of any man 
against his own will, but because they' will not diminish the political weight and influence of 
themselves and their own States for any purpose of augmenting that of other men or other States." 
[Mr. B. affected to believe that the prosperity and consequent political power of a slave State 
would always be inferior to that of a free State. ] '« No, be ye assured throughout all the regions, 
the philanthropist will never uiy'wsttv relieve the slave from the master; the politician will never 
illegally relieve the master from the slave."— (Cong. Deb. vol. iv. 1096.) Mr. Robbins, Mr. 
Briggs, and other eminent men, held similar language. Mr. Holmes, of Maine, a Senator, went 
so far as to declare that the refusal to deliver up fugitive slaves was virtual emancipation, and to 
suppose such a refusal on the part of Pennsylvania as an extreme case, to illustrate his argument! 
This last was as late as 1833. What an advance since then,! Yet these assurances were about 
as true as those now made, that slavery shall not be touched within the States— that the town 
shall not be entered when all the walls are captured. The South, however, confided in them, 
and remained quiet; and presuming on this the war was waged with ever growing zeal. In vain 
did Randolph cry to the South, "principiis olsta"— in vain did his shrill Cassandra tones point 
out the nature of the attack, that the enemy was. proceeding, " not to storm the fort, but to sap;" 
that we ought to remember the sentiment, <<-non vi sed saepe coedendo," and "permit no attack to 
pass, no matter in how demure and apparently trivial an aspect it may be presented." The South 
would heed no warning. When the flood of abolition petitions began first to pour in on Congress, 
they were received and referred to appropiate committees, as the members presenting them might 
move, and duly reported on. This course only encouraged the movement, till the South was at 
last roused into a refusal to receive petitions so insulting, aiid which prayed for such ^r»ss violations 
of her constitutional rights. Bui it was saiu ih&t this refusal afforded a pretext for fanatical agi- 
tation, and that all would be quiet if the old plan was restored. The House of Rep&sentatwqe, 
therefore, repealed the rule against the reception of such petitions, and what his ; eet. the result* 



6 

There can be but one answer — an ever-growing agitation, for fanaticism and unlawful violence 
feed and w.ix strong upon concession. 

Meantime organized societies at the North were forging county seals and free papers to aid the 
slaves whom they seduced to escape, and inciting mobs to murder the owners who dared to recap- 
ture them. They distributed papers through the mails and by their agents, and spared no effort 
to kindle an insurrection among our slaves. They dared not have attempted such outrages upon 
Cuba or Brazil. Between separate nations they would be cause of war, and the offenders would 
have been treated as felons, if arrested. The offence was too notorious tot>e denied, and Gov. Marcy, 
in his message to the New York Legislature, in 1836, acknowledged it to be one of " the sacred 
obligations which the States owe to each other, as members of the Federal Union," " to punish 
residents within their limits, guilty of acts therein which are calculated and intended to excite 
insurrection and rebellion in a sister State." Yet so callous has the South grown to her wrong? 
by use, or so far have later injuries surpassed it, that she ceases to remember this flagrant and still 
subsisting violation of the spirit and intent of our Union ! 

It is now proposed to exclude the South from the territory of California and New Mexico, 
446,638 square miles, large enough to make more than eleven States equal to Ohio. The South 
paid her share, and, as we shall see, far more than her full share, of the expense of the Mexican 
war. Of the gallant volunteers who fought its battles, she furnished 45,640, and the North 
23,084 — but little more than half as many. The South sent one man out of every twenty-six of 
military age — the North only one out of every 124. How those battles were fought and won, 
of which section the generals were natives, whose regiments faltered, and whose left two of their 
men stretched upon the bloody field, while the third planted the stars and stripes upon the Mexi- 
can battlements, the South will leave to History to say. And now it is proposed to exclude the 
survivors and their fellow-citizens from the equal enjoyment of the conquest of the war ! And 
why? — because, as the Vermont resolutions declare, "slavery is a crime against hum mity!" 

The North next proposes to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and so make a harbor for 
runaways, and a centre of abolition agitation in the very heart of Virginia and Maryland. This 
is to be done in defiance alike of good faith and of constitutional obligation ; and why ? because, 
as the Gott resolution, passed by the House of Representatives, declares, "slavery is infamous.'" 

The Northern vote in Congress on these questions is almost unanimous, without distinction of 
parties, against the South. The exceptions are daily fewer, swept away by the overpowering 
tide of fanntical public sentiment at the North. The State Legislatures are equally agreed. They 
have all, and the majority more than once, adopted resolutions of the most offensive character. 
The next threat is to abolish slavery in the dock yards, forts, and arsenals, for there Congress has 
the same jurisdiction and responsibility as in the District. It is asserted that slavery cannot exist, 
without a special law to establish it, in the new Territories, because property in negroes is, as 
they pretend, a creation of municipal regulation alone, and therefore ceases beyond the limits of 
the State which authorizes it. Not only does this argument fail in its major proposition, for there 
is no law establishing slavery in any State where it exists, but it fails also in its application, for 
the limits an 1 authority of each slave State do extend to the new territory held by the common 
Federal agent. But, if true, by parity of reasoning, slavery cannot exist on the high seas, and 
so say our abolitionists. Therefore the slaves, who leave Richmond on a voyage to New Orleans, 
are free as soon as the vessel leaves the shore. The prohibition of what they call the slave trade on 
the hish seas, and then on the Mississippi, whose waters they pretend are common property, and 
then between the States, will quickly follow each other. What would be left the South in such 
a condition? With asylums for runaways and stations for abolition agents in every State, the 
mail converted into a colporteur of incendiary tracts, forbid to carry our slaves from State to State, 
unable to emigrate to new and more fertile lands, and thus renovate our fortunes and give our 
sons a new theatre for their energies, without sacrificing all our habits, associations, and property; 
and yet with all this, bound to pay taxes and fight battles for conquests, we are to have no share 
in, and for a Government known to us only by its tyranny, how miserable would be our 
thraldom ! Can any Southern man bear the idea of such degradation ? He miaht endure the 
loss of his rich conquests in California, but can he bear to be excluded, because his institutions 1 
are infamous ? because he is branded with inferiority, and under the ban of the civilized world '' 
If he can, then is he worthy of all, and more than all, that is threatened him. 

But abolition will not stop, even when slavery is thus hemmed in, " localised and discour- 
aged," as Senator Chase proposes Anti-slavery sentiment is to be made the indispensable con- 
dition of appointment to Federal office; and by thus bribing Southern men to treachery, the war 
is to be carried on to the last fell deed of all — the abolition of slavery within the States — for to 
quote Randolph once more, "Fanaticism, political or religious} has no stopping place, short of 
Heaven, or — of Hell!" 

The slave States have but 30 votes in the Senate, and two of these (Delaware) can hardly be 
counted upon in their defence. Nor is it possible to increase herstrength by new slave States. Rufus 
King lonj si.u-e avowed that the object of the North was political p; ve r , and she will never per- 



tnit Florida or Texas to be divided. A serious claim is already set up to all Texas, west of the 
Nueces, as new territory, acquired by treaty from Mexico, to which the Wilmot proviso may 
and should be applied. The only territory south of the Missouri compromise line, and east of 
the Rocky Mountains, is the district of 58,346 square miles, ceded forever to the Indians; on the 
other band the .North has west of the Mississippi and east of the Rocky Mountains, exclusive of 

the Indian territory 723,248 square miles. 

Add the part of the old Northwest Territory added to Minnesota in vio- 
lation of the Virginia deed of cession ... 22,336 " «« 

All of Oregon 341.463 " " 

In all of undisputed territory 1,087,047 " " 

or enough to make 28 such States as Ohio, or 21 larger than Iowa. This addition alone to the 
strength of the North would give her nearly the three fourths required to amend the Constitution 
and abolish slavery at her pleasure, if we can suppose that she would take the trouble to enact an 
amendment to do that which Mr. Adams declared could be done, in certain cases, under half a dozen 
clauses in the Constitution as it now stands. But when we consider that, in ea?e of our sub- 
mission to the Wilmot proviso, the North will have all California, and New Mexico west of the 

Rio Grande 526,078 square miles. 

Texas, north of Paso and the Eusenada, (the Santa Fe country, east of 

the Rio Grande,).. 124,933 " " 

Texas, between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, 52,018 " " 



703,029* " " 

more than al! the present free States, equal to 23 States of their average size, or 17 such States as 
Ohio, or 14 larger than Iowa, in addition to all we before computed, her preponderance becomes 
truly enormous. Fifteen slave States to 66 free States — not to mention (he chances for several 
.more in Canada ! Can any one suppose that such a union could subsist as a union of equals ? 

In this alarming situation, the South has no hope but in her own firmness. She wishes to 
preserve the Union as it was, and she must therefore insist upon sufficient guaranties for the ob- 
servance of her rights and her future political equality, or she must dissolve a Union which no 
longer possesses its original character. When this alternative is placed before the North, she 
will determine according to the value she places upon the Federal league, and we may anticipate 
her choi-je if we can count what it has been worth to her, and bow large a moral and material 
treasureshe must surrender, if she persists in pushing her aggressions to its overthrow. 

We shall not dwell upon the Revolutionary struggle, though it might easily be shown that the 
South bore more than her proportional share, both in its expenses and its battles. The white 
male population over 16 years of age in 1790 was about the same in Pennsylvania and Virginia ; 
the former oeing 1 10,788, and the latter 110,934; yet according to General Knox's official esti- 
mate, presented to the 1st Congress, Virginia furnished 56,721 soldiers to the Revolution, and 
Pennsylvania only 34,965. New Hampshire had a military population 513 larger than South 
Carolina ; yet she contributed only 14,906 soldiers to South Carolina's 31, 131— -not half! The 
latter quota in fact is nearly equal to Pennsylvania's, who had triple the military population, 
and twice the whole population, free and slave. It exceeded New York's 29,836, though New 
York had much more than double the military population, and 40 per cent, more of total popu- 
lation. Connecticut and Massachusetts did more than any of the free States in that great war ; 
vet we find that while South Carolina sent, to its armies 37 out of every 42 citizens capable of 
bearing arm.-, Massachusetts sent but 32, Connecticut 30, and Aew Hampshire not 18! audit 
must be remembered that, as General Knox says, " in some years of the greatest exertions of the 
Southern states, there are no returns whatever of their militia," while at the North every man 
was entered on the rolls, as the pension list too plainly shows; that while the war assumed a re- 
gular character there, it was here brought home to every tire-side, and there was scarcely a man 
who did not shoulder his musket, even though not regularly in the field. The slave Slates not 
only fought their own battles, nearly unaided, but sent numerous troops to the defence of the 
North ; and when we consider that the free States had the protection ot almost the whole regular 
army, and the benefit of its large disbursements, while the South was left to be scoured by the 
enemy; and that the almost utter ruin of the incomes and private fortunes of her citizen*! ^ ar ex " 
ceeded any amount of taxation ever levied, we cannot doubt that her sufferings in the great cause 
were far heavier than those of the North- But we will not pause to consider any inequality of 
Revolutionary burdens ; if the South bore more than her share, it was voluntary — a tree- will of- 
fering on the altar of Independence. We will pass at once to consider the action of the Fede- 
ral Government, and it? value to the North, when the South was no longer her own mistress. 



these numbers are taken from the official recoil :o ike Spnate in l*17-d. — 71 Ejc. Doc. 
f Mr. Jefferson says, that lobac :o sold daring the wsu for 5 or C s'iii!in^s a hundred, acd did not pay tlie niccssai»- 
snenses'af cul ivation. '• rcspaHitnce, If- 19 



It has often been remarked, that our Union is capable of a peaceable extension over a wider do- 
minion than any other form of government that the world has yet seen. This is due to the happy 
development of the Federal principle in our Constitution — the work, not 90 much of the wit of' 
man, as of Divinely ordained circumstances. It' we keep strictly within its limitations, the 
central power is confined to general legislation upon matters of common interest, and is so organ- 
ized that it cannot be abused for purposes of sectional advantage, as long as the States are one in 
character and feeling. But no human institutions are safe from the selfishness of those who ad- 
minister them; and were it possible for the Union to be divided into two sections of unequal power, 
with broad and growing opposition of character and social organization, it would be impossible to 
prevent the stronger section from plundering the weaker. This has happened in other States, be- 
tween the different classes of society, and the design of every good constitution has been so to 
balance their powers, as '.o make government the result of a compromise between their interests. 
But even if one class succeeds in establishing a permanent mastery over the other, the baneful 
effects of its plundering are alleviated by the expenditure of its fruits in the midst of the plun- 
dered. This is not the case where a federal government is perverted from itsoiiginal equality; the 
tribute drawn from the weaker section enriches the stronger, and the'larger the confederacy, and 
the more distant the tax-consumers from the tax-payers, the greater is the injury to the latter. 
Such has been the relation of Ireland to England under the combined effects of taxation and ab- 
senteeism, and we all know her lamented condition. Our Union was secured from these dan- 
gers, at its beginning, by the homogeneous character of the people. The differences of character 
in the descendants of the Pilgrims and the Cavaliers only combined to make a more perfect 
whole. A common ancestry and language were endeared by common associations of literature 
and of history. All brought with them, as the very frame work of their societies, the same noblf 
old common law, and all restored its ancient Saxon spirit by clearing away its feudal encumbran- 
ces. The institution of negro slavery was foreign to none j the meddling spirit of a spurious 
philanthrophy had not yet dared to attack what it did not understand. Taxation would naturally 
fall more equally, as there was comparatively little difference in the interests of the people of the 
several States. American cotton, which has worked, and is working, such a revolution in the 
commerce of the world, was cultivated only as a curiosity. It was supposed that direct taxes 
would be the chief source of revenue, and the Constitution secured an equality in their imposi- 
tion ; but it was soon found that custom duties, so much more convenient in many respects- 
would be sufficient in time of peace. 

There was, nevertheless, even in those days, one striking difference in the interests of the sec- 
tions; the navigating interest was almost as exclusively Northern, as tobacco and rice were 
Southern. Heaven had favored the South with a more fertile soil and a more genial climate, and 
it was the duty of Government to protect her in the uninterrupted enjoyment of all the advanta- 
ges which her industry could derive from the Divine bounty. The larger profits of rice and to- 
bacco planting withheld her people from less lucrative navigating enterprise, and they found an 
immense benefit in the cheap rates at which foreign vessels transported their productions to all 
•the markets of the world ; it was, in effect, so much added to their price. In the North, on the 
contrary, the profits of navigation were equal to the average returns of other employments, and 
this explains the fact stated by Pitkin, that in New England in 1770, 6-8ths of the tonnage was 
owned by natives ; in New York and Pennsylvania, 3-Hths, while in each of the old plantation 
States, Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, the proportion of domestic tonnage was 
only l-8th. The first effort of the North was, therefore, to levy heavy duties on foreign tonnage, 
and thus to raise freights, so as to repair the injustice of providence, and lower Southern profits 
by increasing Northern. We have been recently told by good authority, (Mr. Clingman in 
his speech on the 22d Jan.,) that Northern ship owners charge as much for freight between New 
York and New Orleans, as between New York and Canton, and that " the whole amount of 
freight on Southern productions, received by the Northern ship owners, has, on a minute calcula- 
tion, been set down at $40,186,728."* However this may be, the loss must have been very 
heavy, if we may judge from the warm opposition of the Southern members in the 1st Congress. 
The discriminating duties on tonnage were, however, voted through by Northern votes and com- 
bined with the paper and funding system, and some other measures, all carried by the same party, 
to change the whole course of our trade. An annual payment of some six millions of dollars on 
account of the public debt, and the ordinary expenditures of Government, were nearly all at the 
North, and created a strong current of exchange in that direction. The Southern planter was 
forced to send his produce to a Northern port, and thence export it, and after bringing the return 
cargo there, to re-ship it home, for it was actually cheaper to pay the double freights and charges 
of such an operation, than to continue the direct trade — once so beneficial — under its new burdens. 
A few figures will give a juster idea of this revolution in commerce. 

In the ten years jast before the Revolutionary troubles, 17G0-9, the Southern colonies, with a 
population of 1,200,000, exported produce to the value of $42,297,705 ; while the exports of 

* See the article in the Democratic Review, by Kettell, of N. Y., on " the Stability of the Union." 



all New England, New York, and Pennsylvania, with a population of 1,300,000, were only 
$9,356,035, less than a fourth. Forty years later, 1821 30, when the new system of legislation 
had had time to work, the actual exports of the same Southern States were but little more than 
half those of the same Northern States, that is 222 millions of dollars to 427. Yet, meantime, 
the culture ot cotton had been introduced extensively, and the exports of that article alone, in the 
same period, amounted to over 256 millions of dollars, chiefly the produce (at that time) of Caro- 
lina and Georgia, to say nothing of 78 millions of tobacco and rice, the growth of the same States, 
with Virginia and Maryland — so completely was trade diverted from its natural channels! In 
1760-'9, Carolina and Georgia exported twice as much in value as all New England, New York, 
and Pennsylvania. Tn 1821-'30, they were exceeded by New York alone. In the former period, 
Virginia and Maryland exported five times as much as New England, eight times as much as 
New York, and over thirteen and a half times as much as Pennsylvania. But in the latter period 
the scales were turned by the weight of Northern power, and while Virginia and Maryland ex- 
ported 92 millions, New England exported 136, and New York 215, more than double. The 
registered tonnage of South Carolina from 1791 to 1837 actually diminished 50 per cent , and Vir- 
ginia's 78 per cent , while New York's doubled and Massachusetts's tripled. * The North has thus 
obtained the use of an immense amount of Southern capital, and all its profits, causing an equal 
loss to the South. When we are considering the value of the Union, it may be as well to calcu- 
late what it has been worth in money to the North in its influence on our trade. We shall thus 
learn a part of what it may cost her to indulge, what is either an unworthy jealousy of our power 
and natural advantages, or a profitless and fanatical abstraction about negro slavery. Plain com- 
mon sense and figures are a mighty stumbling block to your fine talkers about liberty and human 
rights, and our Northern Tallies will feel the peculiar fitness of such a test as dollars and cents. We 
confess, beforehand, that the estimate we shall present is much too low, for it is impossible to take 
into account all the ramified pecuniary advantages of the Union to the North, and we have inten- 
tionally put everything at the lowed mark, so as to reach results which we confidently believe to 
be certain. 

Everybody knows that all the exports of rice and of unmanfactured tobacco and cotton are the 
produce of Southern labor. As to the balance of the exports of domestic produce, we shall assume 
that the South contributes a share in proportion to her population. It is impossible to give the 
grounds of this assumption within our narrow limits, but a careful examination of the official 
statements, from the earliest times, has convinced us that it does not do the South full justice. 
Her naval stores, her breadstuffs, the material she furnishes for the exported manufactures, &c, 
amount to more than the share we have assigned her of the other domestic exports, besides rice, 
raw cotton, and leaf tobacco. We shall see, in the sequel, additional confirmation of this belief. 
But we adhere to our rule of using the lowest figures. ; 

In the eleven years from 1790 to 18(10 inclusive, | the exports of raw cotton, rice, and leaf tobac- 
co, amounted to ninety-six millions, (we use round numbers,) out of three hundred and eleven 
millions of dollars. Of the balance, the South produced one hundred and four millions, 
the North 111. Therefore the exports of Southern produce were in all 200 millions, and of 
Northern, 111 millions. The imports were bought with these exports — were, in fact, their price, 
and, as such, belonged to, and ought to be divided amongst the producers of the exports in the 
ratio of their exportation. This gives 397 millions of dollars as the returns for Southern produce, 
and 21S for Northern. The whole produce of Southern labor in the foreign trade, both the ex- 
ports and imports paid in exchange, amounted to 597 millions, whilst Northern labor yielded 329. 
But during the same period the actual exports of domestic produce, and imports in return, from 
Southern ports, were only 414 millions of dollars in value, and from Northern ports they reached 
512 millions. The North, therefore, had the use and command of 182 and a half millions of the 
productions of Southern labor during this period, and the South lost the use of an equal amount; 
in other words, the North gained the use and the South lost the use of a little more, on an average, 
than I65 millions of Southern capital every year from 1790 to 1800. Instead of remaining in the 
hands of the Southern planters, merchants, ship owners, or agents, importers, wholesale dealers, 
and retail dealers, building up Southern cities, and giving life and employment to hundreds of 
Southern people, this 1 6^ millions of dollars worth of the produce of their labor was transferred 
by the action of Government to the North: and ite annual use, without charge or equivalent, 
was given as a bounty to Northern labor to build up Northern wealth. But even this was not all, 
for we have taken no account of the exports of foreign produce. Yet the foreign goods thus ex- 
ported were first bought either with domestic produce, or the credit founded on domestic produce. 
They were the legitimate appendage of the trade in domestic produce, and may be taken, in part, 
as an index of what the credit and command of that trade was worth — a value which was, of course, 
greater during the European wars, than it has been since in time of peace. These exports ought, 

* Seethe table of colonial trade, and of the trade of the several States since 1789, in Hazard'* Register, vols. 1 and 11 
t See tables A 1, 2, 3, 4, at the end. 



10 



herefore, to be divided, like the imports, amongst the producers of domestic exports in the ratio of 
their production. The whole legitimate Southern trade would thus be swelled to 713 millions of 
dollars, and the Northern to 404; while the actual foreign trade was 466 and 651 millions re- 
spectively, making the gain to the North and the corresponding loss to the South of the use of a 
Southern capital averaging over 22 millions of dollars a year. 

If we apply the same principles of calculation to the next ten years, from 1801 to 1810 inclusive, 
we find that the North had the use of 43 millions, or, counting the exports of foreign produce, of 
53 millions a year of Southern capital, while the South, of course, lost the use of that amount of 
the produce of her yearly labor. 

From 1811 to 1820, the war with England diminished the whole commerce of the country, 
especially the exports of foreign merchandise. During this period, the North had the use of 52 
millions a year of the produce of Southern labor, or, deducting the foreign goods exported, of 45 
millions. The South lost the use of the same amount. 

In the decennial period, 183l-'30, this gain to the North, and loss to the South, amounted to 
63 millions of dollars annually, or, if we add the exports of foreign produce, to 79 millions. In 
the next period, 1831-'40, the profit and loss amounts to the enormous sum of 93 millions per 
annum on the exports of domestic products and return imports, and 106 millions on the whole 
foreign commerce. Thus the South lost the use of the fourth part of the whole annual products 
of her industry, as estimated by Prof. Tucker, from the census of 1840; and the North had all 
that could'be made by trading on this enormous share of the fruits of Southern slave labor. The 
value to the North of this trade, which properly belongs to the South, is still increasing, for in 
1848 we find that the free States had the use of 120 millions of dollars worth of the produce of 
Southern labor for foreign commerce, or of 133 millions, if we add the exports of foreign mer- 
chandise. The slave States lost the use of this great capital, and the North gained if without 
paying any sort of equivalent in return- 
To estimate the value of the Union to the North, in this regard, more palpably and justly, let 
us see what it has been woith to every family of six persons, in each decennial period, counting 
the population at an average between the census at the beginning and that at the end of each pe- 
riod. We place the results in a table: 



Counting the exports of domestic produce only,! 
and the imports paid in return, every northern 
family gained the gratuitous use, annually, of 
the profits of southern labor to the value of. . . 

And to furnish this, every southern family was 
forced to part with the use, annually, of the 
produce of its own industry to the value of. . . 

Or, adding the exports of foreign goods, each 
norlnern family took from the South the use of. 

And each skveholding family had to give up to the 
North the use of its property to the amount of. 



$43.98 79.87, 61.23 



45.36 81.34 68.36 



57.84 98.58, 
58.68 104.09 



70.46 
80.15 



C3 


c> 1 


GO 


2 


62.08 


66.01 j 


72.99 


84.77 


77.69 


75.91 


91.31 


96.50 



56.4P 

80.76 
63.00 

90.18 

We are" struck at the first view of these results with the much larger -amount that the Southern 
family loses than the Northern gains. This may bo due in part to the difference "f papulation; 
but it also corresponds to the general law, that the plunderer never gains as much as the plun- 
dered loses What is most alarming is the steady and recently the rapid increase in the relative 
benefit and damage to the people of the two sections. We find that every Southern family lost, 
in the first period, 4 per cent more than the Northern family gained, hy the monopoly oi South- 
ern trad. j ; in the second period, 6.S per cent, more; in the third, 11 percent ; in the fourth, 17.5 
per cent; in the fifth, 19.3 per cent.; and finally, in 1818, as much as 43 per cent. more. This 
increase has obviously kept pace with the growth of the Northern political power from census to 
census. 

While the free States have been such large gainers by the earnings of the slaveholders, diverted 
from the hands of the natural owners by the fiscal action of the Federal Government upon foreign 
commerce, they have profited in no smaller proportion in the adjustment of taxation. We can- 
not cnle-i.ate the whole burdei-i of indirect taxes, but we can reach results which are certainly 
under the relative amount really paid by the South. When duties are paid upon imports, they 
are indisputably paid by somebody — either by the consumer of the goods imported, or by the ex- 
porter of the domestic produce,. with which those goods are purchased, and to whom they, in fact, 
belong, or partly by both. There can be no fourth supposition. When the planter, either di- 
rectly or through the agency of merchants and factors, exports his tobacco, his cotton, rice, or 
breadstulfs, he receives payment in foreign goods, which he must bring back as imports; and 



11 

when he passes the custom-house at home, he has to pay a part of these returns for duties. Thus 
far the tax falls entirely upon him ; and if we stop here in our reasoning, it is plain that 
the duties are paid by the different sections in the exact ratio of the exports of their produce ; 
for it does not matter that the producer may sell his tobacco, cotton, &c, to some mer- 
chant at home, who afterwards is the actual exporter. The price which that merchant can 
=nve plainly depends on what he can sell for again ; and that depends upon the value of the 
imports he has to take in payment, after deducting all expenses and duties, which must there- 
fore come out of the planter at last, just as if he exported and imported directly. Nor can 
the producer escape the duties by taking, in return for his exports, money, which he dues not 
want, instead of the goods which he needs ; for it would be asking an impossibility to demand no- 
thing but specie in payment, when the exports of cotton alone are considerably more than the 
whole annual produce of gold and silver in the world. But the question here is, not what the 
producer could do, but what he actually did. The records show, that he was really paid for his 
exports m foreign goods, and that duties have been paid upon these to an amount over a billion of 
dollars ; and this enormous sum the producer must have paid when he had to surrender a part ot 
the value of his imports to Government as he entered them. There is but one way in which he 
could have escaped, and that is, by selling the part left for as much as the whole was worth before, 
and, by thus raising the price, throw the whole tax upon the consumer. But. in this case, the 
South must have paid a still greater share of the duties than before ; for not only is she a much 
larger consumer of foreign merchandise than the North, but if the price of the imported article is 
raised, so must be the price of the similar article of domestic manufacture. And the South would 
pay three or four times as much in this shape to the IVorthem manufacturer, as she would to Go- 
vernment in the form of duties. It is true that the increased price of domestic goods would also 
be paid by the Northern consumer, but with this important difference, that what was paid would be 
spent amongst themselves, and so, in a manner, returned to their pockets, as the factories are scat- 
tered through their country, while, to the ^outh, it would be a dead loss. This view of the effect 
of duties has been pressed. by the advocates of free trade, and rejected by their opponent; and as 
we wish to proceed upon undisputed principles, we shall adopt the other'horn of the dilemma, 
and assume that the duties are paid by the producers, and the several sections, in the ratio of their 
produce exported. This course is also more agreeable to our determination to calculate Southern 
burdens and Northern profits at the lowest possible figures, for there can be no doubt that the other 
view of the incidence of duties would at least triple the sum paid by the South. At the same 
time it is proper to say, that in our belief the duties are paid partly by the producer and partly by 
^.he consumer ; that, so far as the latter pays them, he pays three or four times as much more in 
the increased price of similar goods of domestic manufacture, and so far as the former pays them, 
he loses more, often vastly more, in the value of all that part of his produce sold at home, 
which must be lowered to the exact level of the va'ue of what is sold abroad. Hence, the 
mere nominal amount of duties paid to the Federal Government is the least part of the real bur- 
den on the South, whether we consider her as a producer of the exports, or a consumer of the 
return imports. But we shall, nevertheless, confine ourselves to the very moderate principle of 
calculation we set out with, so as to say nothing that is not absolutely certain. 

The whole amount of duties collected from the year 1791 to June 30, 1845, after deducting the 
drawbacks on foreign merchandize exported, was $927,056,09 7.* Of this sum the slaveholding 
States paid .§711,200,000, and the free States only $215,s50,0&7. Had the same amount been 
paid by the two sections in the constitutional ratio of their federal population, the South would 
have paid only $394, 707, 917, and the North $532,312,1*0. Therefore, the slav. holding States 
paid S3 16,492,083 more than their just share, and the free ^tates as much less. They were 
Frek indeed !— not only of slaves, but of taxes! By carrying our calculation dov n to 1S49, 
this sum of 316 millions is raised to 330 odd millions. In the following table we may see at a 
glance how this taxation fell on the respective population of the Korth and South in each decen- 
nial period : 

Talk of the taxes annually paid in dutiesto the Federal Government by a family of 6 persons. 



In each year from 



In the Slave States 
In the Free States. 

Difference. 



1 

1790-1800 


1801-10 


$12.96 
6.75 


18.78 
8.14 


6.21 


10.64 



1811-20 1821-30 



19.44 
6.22 



20.82 
4.28 



13.22 16.54 



1831-40 



16.44 
2.57 



13.87 



1841-5 1846-9 



13 21 14.68 
3.86 



10.71] 10.80 



*See Table H, at the en 1. 



12 

In the first period, the Southern family paid not quite twice as much to the support of the 
General Government, as the Northern family of the same size? in the third, a little more than three 
times as much; in the fourth, near five times as much; and in the fifteen years, from 1831 to 
1845, about six times as much! 

In the only other branch of the public revenue of any size, the disproportion of Northern and 
Southern contributions has been still more enormous. We refer to the proceeds of the sales of 
the public lands, which amounted on January 1, 1849, to the round sum of 137 millions of dol- 
lars. Seventy-nine of these millions came from the sale of lands in the old Northwest Ter- 
ritory, the free gift of Virginia for the sake of the Union, for which she has neither asked nor 
received one cent. About 33 millions more were from the sales of lands in Alabama and 
Mississippi, north of latitude 31°, and within the cession by Georgia, making in all out 
of the l:i7 millions, 112 that were contributed by the slaveholding States. We may fairly 
add to this account 13 millions, the value of lands granted for various purposes to the North- 
western States within their limits, making a total of 125 millions given by Virginia and Georgia 
to the free States But it may be said th;it if this sum had not gone into the federal treasury 
from lands, it must have been raised by direct taxation, and the Southern States would have paid 
their share. W ell, deduct that share, which would have been 47 millions, and we still have left 
the very handsome gratuity of 78 millions, which the slave States, or rather Virginia and Geor- 
gia, gave the North in order to form the Union! 

How have all these taxes been spent' Has the South received, in the disbursements of the 
Federal Government, any compensation for the very disproportionate share she contributed to its- 
revenue' And first, as to the public lands. 

Large quantites of these lands have been given for internal improvements to the States in 
which they lie, and such grants were, therefore, confined to the new or land States. It appears 
from a table which we have carefully prepared from the latest official documents, that the new 
free States have received in this way 5,474, 475 acres, worth at the actual average price of the 
public lands sold within their several boundaries, $7,584,899, while the new slave States have 
received only 3 millions of acres, worth $4,025,000; that is, theie have been granted to the new 
free States 18.5 acres to every square mile of-their surface, while the new slave States have had 
only 9.3 acres to the square mile. The disproportion is still greater in the older States, where 
the system has been longer at work. Thus Louisiana has received 10.8 acres, Alabama 9.8, 
and Missouri only 7.4, while Ohio has had 29.6, and Indiana 47.6, (nearly one thirteenth part,) 
to improve every square mile of iheir respective areas. The proportion will be somewhat dimin- 
ished if we add the donations for schools which were made by virtue of a general law; but even 
then the free States have received 38.9 acres to the square mile, and the slave States only 27.7* 

We cannot trace all the expenditures of the Federal Government, so as to determine the exact 
amount in each section. There are no published documents to furnish the necessary data. But 
fortunately the distinction cm be made in some branches of Federal disbursements, usually classed 
as miscellaneous, and from these we may judge of the rest. 

A report of the Secretary of the Treasury, (460 Ex. Doc. 1837-'8,) shows, that in the five 
years, 1833'7, out of 102 millions of expenditures, only 37 millions were in the slave States. 
Yet during the same years, our table shows that they paid 90 millions of duties to 17 and a half 
paid by the free States. Therefore, while all that the North contributed to the support of the 
Union was spent within her own borders, she enjoyed the additional expenditure of 53 millions, 
or $10,600,000 a year, levied on the South. 

An examination of the Secretary's report will show that even this statement does not sive fl 
just idea of the inequality. A better notion may be formed by investigating in detail some bran- 
ches of expenditure, of which we have full accounts. 

The collection of the customs revenue is a large and increasing item in the Federal expenses. 
It gives salaries to a great number of officers; at Boston, New York, and Philadelphia alone, 
there are 1123, and it is the indirect source of subsistence to six times as many persons. These 
expenditures have amounted in all, from the formation of the Government to the year 1849, to 53 
millions of dollars, of which only 10 millions have been at the South. Yet the slave States have 
paid at least seven-ninths, or 41 millions of these expenses, so that the free States had the bene- 
fit for their citizens, in custom house offices, revenue cutters, &c.j not only of their own pay- 
ments, 12 millions, but of 31 millions paid by the South. 

The bounties on pickled fish, and the allowances to fishing vessels; have amounted, in round 
.numbers, to 10 millions of dollars. Nearly every cent of this large sum has gone to the free 
States, chiefly to New England. The records show that slaveholders have not received so much 
of it as $150,000. Yet these very slaveholders have paid of these bounties and charities to the 
North, no less than $7,800,000. 

While $838.76 have been spent by the Federal Government in defending with forts each mile 
of the Northern coast line, fiom the river St John's, in Maine, to Delaware bay, only $545.17 

* Our calculations are founded on the Report of the Commissioner of the Land Office, 1848-'9. 



13 

per mile has been devoted to the Southern coast, to the Sabine; up to June 30th, 1846, the latest 
period for which there are official returns. More than six-elevenths of the expenditures on the 
Southern coast have been in fortifying the Chesapeake bay and the mouth of the Mississippi, that 
is, the access to the seat of Government, and the great outlet of northwestern commerce. It is 
fair, therefore, to deduct what was spent at these points, which leaves only $416.89 spent per 
mile in fortifications on the Atlantic coast of the slave States, from North Carolina to Mississippi 
inclusive. Yet while the South has not had half as much expended in her defence as the North, 
she has paid some 14 out of 18 millions of dollars devoted to these objects.— (See off. rep. to the 
Senate, 79 Senate Doc, 1846-'7.) 

The lighthouse system exhibits the same inequality. The appropriations for erecting light- 
houses for the year ending June 30, 1847, (see 27 Ex. Doc., 1847-'8,) were $60.01 for each 
mile of the Atlantic shore to the North, and $29.79, not quite half, for each mile of shore to 
the South, from Delaware to Texas ! The difference is still greater, if we consider the whole 
coast line, including islands and rivers to the head of tide- The North had $29 . 62 to light every 
such mile, and the South $9.23, not one-third. The expense of supporting the existing light- 
houses in the same year,(see 7 Ex. Doc- , 1847-'8,) on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, was $476,642. 
Of this, the South paid at least $360,000; yet she received only $187,830, equal to $26.70 per 
mile on her dangerous shore from the Delaware to the Rio Grande, or $8.28 per mile of her 
whole coastline. The balance, $172, 170, of her payment went to assist theNorth, who spent but 
$116,642 of her own money in lighting her shore, ata cost of $87.65 per mile, or including rivers 
and islands, of $43.27 per mile. In the year 1833, there was, (see 27 Ex. Doc, 1837-'8)— 
At the North 1 lighthouse to every 32.6 miles of Northern shore, and to every 66.1 miles of coast. 
At the South 1 " " 108.8 « " " " 370.1 " 

At theNorth 1 lamp " 2.9 " « " " 5.9 " 

At the South 1 " " 8.6 « " " " 29.3 " 

In 1839, there was, (see 140 Ex. Doc, 1841-2,)— 
\tthe North 1 light-house to every 24.8 miles of shore, and to every 50.2 miles of coast. 
At the South I ° " " 81.2 " " " 276.4 » 

At the North 1 lamp " 2.4 " " " 4.9 " 

At the South 1 " " 6.8 " " " 23 4 « 

Scarcely half as many lamps as the North had lighthouses! And yet at this time the South 
was paying five-sixths of the revenue. The proportions in other years are not materially differ- 
ent; we might multiply examples at pleasure. (See the annual reports.) 

Another fruitful source of expense, which threatens to grow larger, is the internal improve- 
ment system, and like all the rest, it bears with peculiar weight upon the South. Before the year 
1 845, (see 44 Sen Doc. 1846-7,) there had been spent upon roads, harbors, and rivers, (exclusive 
of the Mississippi and Ohio, which are common to both sections, (the sum of $15,201,223. Of 
this sum, the South received $451 to improve each ten miles square of her area, equal to $2,757,- 
816, while $12,743,407, that is, $2,805 for each ten miles square, was allotted to the North. 
The South paid not only all that she ever received back in these appropriations, but also $10, 142,- 
184 for the exclusive benefit of the North. The cost of the forty-eight miles of the Cumberland 
road in Maryland and Virginia, $1,020,239, is included, for that road was designed for the 
Northwest. But if it is deducted, there are still left $9, 121,945, paid by Southern labor for the 
internal improvements of the North. 

The history of this system illustrates a rule to which history offers no exception, that a tribute 
grows with the strength of the collectors. Before 1824, the only appropriation of any consider- 
able size for internal improvements was $607,000 for the Cumberland road, east of the Ohio river. 
About that time, the North became stronger by a new apportionment of representation, and the 
unfortunate concession on the Missouri question encouraged her to new encroachments upon the 
South. From 1824 to 1833 inclusive, the Federal Government gave for internal improvements 
to the free States $5,194,441, or $1145 per ten miles square, and to the slaveholding States 
only $957,100, or $157 per ten miles square. From 1834 to 1845 inclusive, the North received 
$7,231,639, or $1593 per ten miles square, and the South $1,171,500, or $192 for the same 
area. In the first period the North received from the treasury 7.2 times as much as the South ; 
in the next period, 8.3 times as much. In the first period the South paid, over and above what 
was given back to her, $3,642,900 to improve the North, and $5,731,000 in the second period, 
an increase on the yearly average of 31 per cent. 

The inequality was especially great amongst the old thirteen States. 

New England received $1,101,730, equal to $1715, to improve every ten miles square. 

New York, Pennsylvania, and 

New Jersey received 5,226,350, " 5234, «« " 

The old plantation States, Vir- 
ginia, Maryland, the Caroli- 

nas, and Georgia ,653,100, " 320, 

This needs no comment. 



14 

The Presidential veto has arrested these appropriation since 1845. Congress, however, passed 
bills, which gave still more to the North and still less to the South. The estimates from the 
Treasury Department this winter are of the same character, for which we impute no blame to the 
Administration ; it well knows, that nothing more equal could receive the sanction of Congress, 
as now constituted. 

The coast survey had cost not much less than a million of dollars in 1845, and had been almost 
entirely confined to the Northern coast, though the North had only 6,675 miles of coast line to 
the South's 21,021. 

It is generally, and perhaps justly, supposed that the post office system works more equally be- 
tween the sections, than any other part of the Federal Administration. Yet, in 1846, the mails 
\^ere transported 21,373,000 miles in the free States, or 47 miles to every square mile of their 
area, and only 16,025,000 miles, or 26 miles to each square mile, in the South. In 1847, there 
were 9,599 postmasters in the North, and only 5,664 in the South, though their population is 
as 97 to 73, and their areas (exclusive ol Texas) as 45 to 61.* There is, in fact, a general dis- 
position at the North to look to Federal expenditures as a means of support ; and there is a con- 
stant press on the Administration to multiply offices. Hence the immense rush for removals and 
scramble for the spoils at the incoming of every new President, and the cardinal maxim of North- 
ern party management — to govern by patronage and not by a reliance on principle. The maxim 
is utterly repugnant to Southern feeling and practice. 

The pension system throws a strong light on the tendency of the people of the free States to 
quarter themselves on the General Government, at the same time that it shows the usual progres- 
sive inequality of expenditures between the two sections. A calculation, founded on data in 307 
Sen. Doc, 1838-9, shows that from 1791 to 1838 inclusive, $35,598,964 had been paid for 
Revolutionary pensions, of which the North received §28,262,597, oi $127.29 for every soldier 
she had in the war, and the South $7,336,367, being only $49.89 for each of her soldiers. The 
number of soldiers is here estimated according to Knox's report, which, confessedly, does not 
show by a great deal the full exertions of the South in raising troops. Let us then compare the 
amounts received with the white population of each section in 1790, and we find the free States 
in 1838 had received $14.35 of Revolutionary pensions for every soul in their limits in the former 
year, while the South had received only $5.61 for every white. But the military efforts of the 
slaveholding States were fully in proportion to their whole population, for the labor of the slaves 
on the plantations left a much larger proportion of their masters free to take up arms. On this 
supposition, the Southern soldier received only $3 74 for the same Revolutionary services which 
brought the Northern $14.35. This gross inequality remains the same by whatever test it is 
tried. For example : 

The seven free States contributed to the expenses of the warf $61,971,170 

And had received in pensions, in 1838 28,262,597 

Balance in their favor $33,703,573 

The six slave States contributed $52,438,123 

And had received, in 1838 7,336,367 



Balance in their favor -• $45, 101,756 

Now let us see how it stands with single States : 

Virginia contributed $19,085,982 ratio as $100 

And received in pensions up to 1838 1,969,534 tc 10.3. 

Massachusetts contributed 17,964,613 ratio as $100 

And received in the same time 4,058,031 to 22.8. 

South Carolina contributed 1 1,523,299 ratio as $100 

And received in the same time 431,141 to 3.5. 

New York contributed 7, 179,983 ratio as $100 

And received in the same time 7,850,054 to 109.3. 

To appreciate this injustice fully, we must remember that the South not only paid into the fedetai 
Treasury, all she ever received back in pensions, but also $16,663,633 of the pensions given to 
the North. The inequality of the apportionment of these Revolutionary pensions has grown with 
the Northern majority in Congress. In the first decennial period, 1791-1800, the free States 
received annually $58,000 more than the South. In the next period, this yearly excess was 
diminished to $43,000, but it rose to $339,000 in the third period. From 1821 to 1830 it aver- 
aged $799,000, and from 1831 to 1838, $855,000. In like manner grew the burden upon the 

*See the annual reports. 

jSee the well-known report of the Commissioners to settle the State accounts. 



15 

South in paying the pensioners at the North, besides those at home. In the first period it was 
§417,449; in the second, §370,000; in the third, $3,000,000; in the fourth, $7,500,000; and 
in the last period, (of only 8 years,) §9,750,000. 

\ccording to General Knox's report, the North sent to the army 100 men for every 227 of 
military age in 1790, and the South 100 for every 209. But in 1848, 1 out of every 62 of the 
men of military age in 1790* was a revolutionary pensioner in the North, and only 1 out of 110 
in the South. New England alone then had 3, 146 of these pensioners, more than there were in 
all the slave States; and New York two-thirds as many, though she contributed not one-seventh 
as much to the war. t 

The results are equally remarkable, if we have regard to the whole number of pensions, revo- 
lutionary and other. The expenses under this head, for the four years ending in 1837,* were 
$8,010,051 in the free States, and $2,588,101 in the slave States, who not only paid their own 
share, but $6,300,000 to the North. New England alone received $3,924,911, rather more 
than $2 a head for every man, woman, and child in her limits. During the same four years she 
paid in taxes to the Federal Treasury, according to our tables, $1.72 per head, so that she actu- 
ally received more in pensions than she paid in taxes! In 1840 there were not quite two and a 
half times as many pensioners at the North as at the South, but in 1848 there were more than three 
times as many. New England had more revolutionary pensioners than the five old plantation 
States had pensioners of all kinds. 

The public debt has been the source of yet more enormous benefits to the North. The pay- 
ments on account of principal and interest had amounted in all, on the 30th of September, 1848,f 
o $500,138,719. Of this sum the South had paid 112 millions of dollars from the lands ceded 
by her, as before shown, and 302 millions of the residue in duties on imports, making in all 414 
millions, nearly the whole of which was paid at the North. The chief owners of this debt have 
been citizens of that section, partly because the funds yielded a higher profit than investments in 
their lands — partly because they could advantageously speculate in stocks, by means of the free 
use of the large Southern capital, which, as we have shown, continually passed through their 
hands. The average payment of the Federal debt by the South to the North has been over 7 mil- 
lions of dollars a year. Well may the North say that " a national debt is a public blessing!" 

The heads of the Federal expenditures which we have examined give a fair notion of the rest; 
and it may be safely assumed, that while the Sonth has paid seven-ninths of the taxes, the North 
has had seven-ninths of their disbursement. The military and naval expenses, the civil and 
diplomatic, are partly in salaries; but chiefly in contracts. As to the salaries, it is well known 
that the North receives much the most; and it is equally notorious that nearly all the contracts 
are given to her citizens. It may be supposed that they are the lowest bidders, and that if South- 
em bidders made better offers, they would get the contracts. But before they can do so, they 
must be placed on an equal footing. The large capital, which the South has in the foreign trade, 
must be restored to the hands of her citizens, for it is the use of this capital, for which the North- 
ern man pays nothing, and the concentration by the Federal fiscal action of all our commerce in 
his cities, that enable him to command all the lucrative contracts of Government. 

We have no means of computing the exact number of persons at the North who live upon the 
Federal Treasury. Far the larger part of the custom-house and land officers, as well as of the 
other civil officers, are in the free States. If we add all these the 20 odd thousand pensioners± 
and postmasters, the contractors, and the holders of the public debt, we shall be safe in estimating 
the persons at the North, who are directly dependent on the Federal revenues, at 50,000 Add 
their families, and we have an army of 300,000 tax consumers in the free States, nearly all sup- 
ported by the slaveholding tax payers. 

Let us now compare the present condition of a Northern and a Southern parish, each containing 
100 families of six persons. In the former, we shall find that there are some three of its families 
who derive the whole, or a part of their income, directly from the United States Treasury, while 
there is no such family in the latter, if it be like the majority of the slaveholding communities of 
the same size. If the Northern parish happen to be on the coast, every bay, and inlet, and creek 
has been carefully surveyed by the Federal Government, and lights shine every twenty odd miles 
along the shore, to protect its mariners. In the Southern parish, the vessels must find their way 
through the shoals as they best can, for there has been no survey, and no warning beacon cheers 
the storm for hundreds of miles. The Union spends ten dollars in cutting roads and canals, clean- 
ing rivers, and constructing harbors in the Northern parish, where it spends one in the Southern. 
And to secure these benefits, the parish in the free States pays in taxes $388, and receives back 
in disbursements $1,360; while the same number of families in the slave States pay $1,620, and 
receively only $270. The excess of $1,350 goes to be distributed amongst the Northern parishes. 
This is not all, for the hundred families of the Southern neighborhood are deprived of the profits 

* See 460 Ex. Doc, ]837-'8. 

t See Treasury report, lf'48-'9. 

J In 1840, the pensioners alone at the North were over 31,000. 



16 

of using over ,$8,000 of their own cotton, tobacco, grain, &c, in order to let the hundred Northern 
families use over .$5,000 of it, a whole year, free of charge. When the two parishes join in war 
against a common foe, the Southern must send five times as many soldiers, and pay five times as 
much of the expenses ; and yet, when the contest is over, it must suffer its partner to seize all the 
conquests, and at the same time to kidnap its property and attack its domestic peace. Can inso- 
lence — can tyranny go farther? Or can history show a more degraded community than the 
Southern must be, if it submits ? 

When we regard this course of taxation and disbursement, we cease to wonder at the growth 
of the cities*ofthe North, or the palaces that cover her comparatively barren soil. McCulloch re- 
marks, that England's enormous expenditures during the great European war, in the beginning of 
this century, offered new employment and rewards to hundreds of her people, that the heavy taxes 
only served to stimulate their industry and invention, and that, as nearly all the public debt was 
due at home, it may well be doubted whether the whole effect was not to increase her wealth. 
However this may be, we can easily imagine how vast would have been her profits and prosperity, 
had these taxes all been paid by some foreign nation while she had the advantage of their disburse- 
ment, or how wretched and miserable would be her people, had the vast sums levied from them 
been expended for the Benefit of strangers in far distant countries. Yet the first case is but a pic- 
ture of the state of the North under our Union, as the last would be of the South, but for her great 
national resources, and the recuperative energies of her people and her institutions. In this Gov- 
ernment forcing system, the genial climate and luxuriant growth of the South are transported* 
beneath wintry skies, to the rocks of New England. The primal curse is partly obliterated for 
them by Federal agency, and the command is changed into " Thou shalt live by the sweat of the 
brow of the Southern slaveholder." The wages of Southern labor and the profits of Southern 
capital are swept northwardly by this current of Federal taxation and disbursement as steadily, and 
more swiftly, than the Gulf stream bears the waters of our shores. Well may the North declare 
that the Union is invaluable, and sing hymns to its perpetuity ! 

For all this crying injustice, the South has to blame her own weak concessions, as much as the 
grasping exactions of the North. The free States have only used their power for their own inte- 
rest ; and when has human nature ever been such, that a strong majority would do otherwise ? 

" For why ? — the good old rule 
Sufficeth them, the simple plan, 
That he should take who hath the power, 
And he should keep who can !" 

Perhaps the free States may, like Clive, when confessing the plunder of the East, marvel at its 
facility, and " stand astonished at their own moderation." The white population of the South 
has kept pure the blood of their revolutionary fathers. The few emigrants who have settled in 
the South have been quickly assimilated in character by the superior numbers of her people, and 
have thus added to her strength. Not so in the free States ; their population has increased faster 
than at the South ; but the difference is entirely due to the emigrants of Europe, who are rapidly 
increasing in number. In 1840 the arrivals were under 100,000, and last year over 400,000 sought 
our shores, which number is greater than the whole natural increase of the people of the North. 
The tide cannot stop at this point. Mr. Webster has proposed, and his proposal is approved by 
all who are eager to court the foreign vote, to give a quarter section of the public lands to every 
foreigner who may choose to settle on them. What countless swarms of needy adventurers will 
pour out of the great European hive to accept the bounty ! The free States can no longer assimi- 
late such crowds to their natives ; the superior numbers will overpower and change the native 
character. And it is for these strangers, to provide lands to be given away to all nations of the 
earth, that the citizens of the South are to be excluded from the common domain ! The old like- 
ness of interests, of character, and of feeling, between the sections is fast wearing away under 
these influences. The free States are filled more and more with a manufacturing and town popu- 
lation ; the slave States preserve the old country character. The people of the former are losing 
the Revolutionary associations, which were one of the bonds of our Union. If some still trace 
back to fathers who fought side by side with the ancestors of the Southern people at Monmouth 
and at Eutaw, a still greater number can remember no such past ; their sires were then in other 
iands, or perchance were here, but in the ranks of the foe. There is no sympathy, no common 
feeling among these people, to weigh against the deep-seated and growing hostility to the institu- 
tions of the slave States. Negro slavery, on the one hand, and what Allison calls, " the practi- 
cal white slavery of factories" on the other, combine with these causes to make a yawning and 
ever- widening gulf between the sections. Even constitutional guaranties are but parchment 
bulwarks against the assaults of selfish and superior power. When the parties are separated by 
widely variant social institutions, and by a growing opposition of character, sentiments, and in- 
terests, there can be no security for the weaker, short of a perfect equality in political power, and 
on that, the South must insist, as wise old George Mason, one of Virginia's brightest lights, said : 



17 

" The majority 'will be governed by their interests. The Southern States are the minority in 
both Houses. Is it to be expected that they will deliver themselves, bound hand and foot, to the 
Eastern States, and enable them to exclaim in the words of Cromwell, on a certain occasion.^ 
'the Lord hath delivered them into our hands.' " 

To determine still more conclusively whether the North will persist in refusing this equality to 
the South, when she finds that the consequence must be a dissolution of the Union, let us examine 
the effects of such an unhappy event upon her condition. In the first place, she would lose all 
the advantages she now derives from the gratuitous and forced loan of the Southern capital in the 
foreign trade, and instead of receiving the fertilizing showers of the federal disbursements of the 
taxes paid by the slave States, the whole expenses of her Government would be thrown upon her 
own people. Last year, her productions for exportation were only $32,210,000, and her corres- 
ponding share of the imports, including specie, not quite 36 millions. How would it be possible 
to raise, on these imports, duties to the amount of 29 millions — her share of the expenses of the 
Federal Government, as estimated by Mr. Meredith for the next fiscal year ? An average duty of 
even 50 per cent, would raise only 18 millions, supposing the imports to remain the same, when, 
in fact, they could not fail to decline under such a burden. Direct taxes, ruinous to her manu- 
factures, and still more dangerous for her social organization, would be the inevitable resort. Com- 
pare this with the federal taxes she has paid under the present Union for the last nine years, ave- 
raging less than 6 millions of dollars a year. She could not assist her finances by imposing du- 
ties on her imports from the South, for they consist chiefly of unmanufactured produce, which is 
essential to her people. How could she tax the Virginia grain, which feeds New England, 
or the cotton, on which her factories depend for their very existence ? There is reason to sup- 
pose that her diffidulties would be increased by an actual decline in her foreign trade. The 
only increase in her exports for many years has been in manufactures and breadstuff's. The 
former were rather over 1 1 millions of dollars in 1 849, chiefly cotton goods. Of these the 
South furnishes the raw material, estimated by McCulloch, as well as by the Secretary of the 
Treasury, at one- fourth of the whole value, to say nothing of the food for the operatives, which 
has been calculated by Mr. Webster and others at a large sum, and for which the necessities of 
Northern industry would still secure admittance into their ports free of duty. But if the North, 
instead of receiving a large bonus through the Federal Government from the South, had to pay the 
expenses of her own Union, her manufactures could not stand English competition for a day. 
Even the South, if her people found it profitable to manufacture, would have a great advantage 
in the lightness of taxation. The North, for example, has hitherto conducted a very lucrative 
trade with China, to whom she sells about a million of dollars' worth of cotton goods, but when 
the price of her manufactures was raised by taxation, and the return cargoes subjected to the tax 
necessary to raise her required revenue, what would become of this trade 1 Her goods would no 
longer enter the Southern market, not only free of duty, but with a discriminating duty of 30 to 
50 per cent, to protect them against foreign competition. On the contrary, they would have to 
meet the manufactures of the world on terms of perfect equality, perhaps even with a discrimi- 
nation against them, unless she preserved the comity of nations as to our slave institutions. 
The Northern exports of manufactures, so far from increasing, would probably decline, if the 
Union were dissolved. They can barely sustain the competition of their rivals with all their pre- 
sent advantages ; not only withdraw these, but increase their cost by taxation, and they must 
sink beneath the burden. 

Nor is it possible that the free States, despite the fables about the Northwest, can long have 
any surplus of breadstuff's and provisions for exportation. We find that, according to the esti- 
mate of crops and population in the Patent Office Report for 1848, and assuming, with the Com- 
missioner, the increase of neat cattle and swine since 1840 at 25 per cent, that the production of 
grain (wheat and corn) at the South was 45.9? bushels for every person, while at the North it 
was only 24.78. The census of 1840 gave 38.74 bushels per head at the South, and 18.48 at 
the North, which is probably more reliable. In 1840 there were 104 neat cattle and 226 hogs 
for every 100 persons at the South, which were increased to 107 cattle and 232 hogs in 1848. 
At the North there were 76 neat cattle in 1840, and only 72 in 1848, for every 100 persons ; 
while of swine, in the former year, there were 101, and in the latter only 96 for the same num- 
ber of persons. 

These statistics show, not' only what has been pointed out by other inquiries, that the subsist- 
ence of the Northern laborer is much lower than of the Southern, but that it is declining, espe- 
cially in animal food, which is always the first sign that population begins to press upon the means 
of subsistence Other facts are equally conclusive, that the bulk of the surplus breadstufts and 
provisions must be at the South, and that the North will soon find it as much as she can do, to feed 
her own population well. The average crop of wheat in Virginia and Maryland is 10 bushels 
for every person of their population ; in Tennessee 9, and in Kentucky 7$. But in New York 
it is on'y 5$ bushels ; in Pennsylvania 6, and even in the new States, Indiana, with 8$ bushels, 
does not equal Tennessee or old Virginia ; and Illinois produces under 7 bushels for each person. 
Ohio reaches 10$ bushels, but her Board of Agriculture says that she has attained her maximum, 



18 

except at an increased cost of production. The futare prospects for the wheat crop in the free 
States are still worse. New England has actually declined in her food crops of all kinds.* We 
are toid, on good authority, that Western New York, once celebrated for the crops' on the Genessee, 
•produces less wheat than formerly;! and Mr. Solon Robinson, a most competent judge, and him- 
self an Indiana man, says "wheat is the most precarious crop in the West, and altogether unsafe 
for the farmer to rely on. I consider Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia the best wheat States in 
the Union. I saw one thousand acres of wheat in Virginia last season better than any one thous- 
and I ever saw in the West." This agrees with the results of chemical analysis, which shows 
that most of the Northwestern soils, when their virgin qualities are exhausted, are destitute of 
some of the most essential elements of wheats 

This gradual, but sure decline, in the returns of agriculture in the free States is one cause of the 
increasing tendency of their population to desert the country and concentrate in towns and factories. 
In some of those States, the only increase, according to the last census, was in the towns. In 
New York, the population of the fourteen largest towns increased 64^ per cent; in all.the rest of 
the State, only 19 per cent. In Ohio, the fifteen largest towns increased 138 per cent. ; the State 
but 62 per cent. According to Prof. Tucker, at the last census, 35 per cent, of the whole New 
England population lived in towns. The proportion of persons engaged in manufactures had in- 
creased from 21 per cent, in 1820 to 30 per cent, in 1840; in the middle States the increase had 
been from 22 to 28 per cent. ; and even in the Northwest, from 10 to 13 per cent. It has been 
yet more rapid since. Meantime the proportion engaged in agriculture had declined; the reverse 
was the case in the slaveholding States. It'appears, therefore, that it is impossible for the North 
long to have any surplus of food for exportation, whether we regard the capacities of her soil or 
the proportion of her people engaged in tilling it. The crops cannot keep pace with the natural 
increase of population, and much less with the still greater increase from European emigration. 
There is yet another cause to prevent Northern grain from being exported, while Southern can 
be bought. The quality of wheat, and the quantity of bread it will make, depend upon its dryness 
and the proportion of nutritive matter or gluten contained in it. Its dryness is all important in 
determining whether it will bear a voyagre. According to the analysis of Prof. Beck, of Rutger's 
College, N. J., (in the Patent Office Report, 1849,) Southern wheat has several per cent, less 
water than Northern, and as much more of gluten. So great is the difference, that it is said 
that Alabama wheat flour will make 20 per cent, more bread than Ohio. This of itself, will give 
a more and more decided advantage to Southern breadstuffs in the foreign market. § 

The general conclusion is therefore unavoidable, that the North cannot long continue to export 

breadstuffs and provisions, and that the wholeamount of her productions for exportations, includ- 

, ing her manufactures, would greatly decline under a dissolution of the Union. Her main reliance 

for revenue woald therefore be on direct taxation, and how this will affect her social condition 

we shall presently see. 

Meantime the situation of the slave States would be very different. The exports of cotton, rice, 
and tobacco for the year ending June 30th. 1849, were about 75 millions of dollars. Add the 
Southern si are of ihe rest of the domestic exports, and it makes the whole exports of the produce 
of the slave States not less than 100 millions of dollars. Their proportional share of the imports 
paid for this produce was 1 12 millions, and the low dirty of 10 per cent, on these would yield to 
the South a revenue of more than 11 millions ample for every purpose. Her proportional share 
(of Mr. Meredith's estimates, before referred to) is only 15 millions, and her expenditures would 
be much less for her population than the North's. Her territory is more compact, and her people 
are unaccustomed to look to Government for the means of living. All the ordinary expenditures 
of the United States in 1830, with a third more population than the South now has, were but 13 
millions. We have placed her revenue at the lowest, for the increase in the value of the exports 
of cotton alone in the present year will probably be 40 millions, if we may judge from the returns 
thus far. If we add the rice, tobacco, grain, and cotton sold to the North, 30 millions more, we 
have a total of 170 millions of exports, and the return imports may be fairly put down at 200 
millions, on which the same low duty would yield to the South a revenue of 20 millions of dollars! 
It is very plain that the South could have no difficulties in her finances. Meantime her trade 
would revive and grow, like a field of young corn, when the long expected showers descend after 
a wjtherii.g drought. The South now loses the use of some 130 or 140 millions a year of her 
capital, and also pays to the Federal Government at least 26 millions of taxes, 23 of which are 
spent beyond her borders. This great stream of taxation continually bears the wealth of the South 

*See Elhvoofl Fisher's " North and South." 

tSee Intent 0;fiee Report for 1848, p. 247. 

JSee an excellent essay on the wheal crop, bv Mr. Holeomb, of Delaware, in the American Farmer. 

§By a comparison, of the table of prices in 'New York and Chicaso, with the reports of farmers in the Patent Office 
Report, we find that it already costs the Northwestern farmer, on tin average, §1 to raise a bushel of wheat and place it 
in New York, and 75 cents for a bnshel of corn. The !ea?t increase in the cost of production would drive him from the 
market. 



19 

far away on its waves, and small indeed is the portion which ever returns in refreshing clouds 
to replenish its sources. Turn it back to its natural channel, and the South will be relieved of 15 
millions of taxes— to be left where they can be most wisely expended, in the hands of the payers; 
and the other 11 millions will furnish salaries to her people and encouragement to her labor. 
Restore to her the use of the 130 or 140 millions a year of her produce for the foreign trade, and 
all her ports will throng with business. Norfolk and Charleston and Savannah, so long pointed 
at by the North as a proof of the pretended evils of slavery, will be crowded with shipping, and 
their warehouses crammed with merchandise. The use and command of this large capital would 
cut canals; it would build roads and tunnel mountains, and drive the iron horse through the re- 
motest valleys, till "the desert should blossom like the rose." 

A remarkable difference between the Northern and Southern sections is, that while the latter is 
complete in herself, both in the resources of wealth and the means of communication with the 
world, the former is strikingly the reverse. We have already shown that the slaveholding States 
produce nearly twice as much food for their population as the free States, and are still increasing 
in quantity, both of bread and meat, for each person. It is notorious that the Eastern States have 
long been' in the habit of drawing large supplies of grain from the Chesapeake and from North 
Carolina. With the tendency of Northern population to gather in towns and factories, and the 
increasing tide of foreign immigration, the time cannot be very far distant when the free States, 
as a whole, will be dependent on the South for a part of their food. The progress of population 
must soon force a resort to inferior soils for cultivation, and so raise the cost of production. On 
the other hand, such a day is far, far distant in the South. Her numbers receive no unnatural 
increase from immigration, but the adjustment of population to food is left to the eternal laws of 
nature. Here inhabitants are not so densely settled, and have therefore more land to cultivate. 
The soil is more fertile, and the superiority of climate is almost equal to as much more of natural 
fertility. It may, therefore, be concluded, that her people will continue to have a large surplus of 
food for exportation, after themselves consuming more per head than the people of the free States 
raise. And this, without counting upon the rice, with which they supply the whole United 
States, besides exporting several millions of dollars worth. 

But if such is the comparative condition of the two sections as to the great staff of life, how is 
it in regard to other articles, which add to our comfort, and minister to the higher wants of a re- 
lined civilization ? 

The Patent Office Report (for 1847, p. 181) estimates the consumption of sugar in the United 
States at 320 millions of pounds annually, which agrees very well with the returns of imports re- 
tained for consumption, and the amount of the Louisiana crop. This allows 1 6 or 1 7 pounds for 
every person, black and white, in the country, and makes the consumption at the South not quite 
147 millions of pounds. But the Louisiana crop has averaged 200 millions of pounds for the 
last four years, which would not only supply the Southern demand, but leave a surplus for expor- 
tation of 53 millions of pounds, worth §2,650,000. This is besides 10 millions of gallons of 
molasses, which will pay all the expenses of cultivation. We may add, that the culture of sugar 
is fast extending at the South. There are large districts in western Louisiana and Texas, and in 
the peninsula of Florida, where it may be raised to any amount as cheaply as in Cuba iN othing 
is wanting but capital to open them, and erect the necessary machinery. In the event of a disso- 
lution of the present Union, this would be easily supplied from the 15 millions of taxes saved, 
and the 140 millions of Southern produce restored to our use. On the other hand the North is 
entirely dependent on the South and other countries for 173 millions of pounds of sugar, worth 
$8,650,000. 

Tobacco is another great staple of the trade of the world. Nearly the whole production 
(220 millions of pounds) of the United States, is in the South; that is, 210 millions of pounds, 
worth, at 5 cents, 10£ millions of dollars. Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, alone, pro- 
duce S9 millions, and the quality of their tobacco is acknowledged to be superior to any in the 
world. The ^outh can supply the whole annual consumption of England and France, 49 miU 
lions, and still have 2? pounds left for every soul, slave and free, of her people of both sexes above 
10 years of a*>e. It would cost the North $8,756,000 for the 175 millions of pounds required to 
furnish her population as abundantly. This srreat staple has become almost a necessary of life, 
and we may expect a steady increase in the demand for it, while slave labor, and certain peculiari- 
ties of soil and climate, give the South a monopoly of the supply of the higher qualities. But 
the chief crop of the South is yet to be considered; we, of course, mean cotton. 

The exports of this one article have some years been over two-thirds of the whole domestic ex- 
ports of the United States. Last year they were more than half, — over 66 millions of dollars. 
The price this year averages 73 per cent higher, as calculated from the actual returns, so that 
the exports, though less in quantity from the short crop, must be considerably greater in value. 
The crop has increased 25 per cent, since 1840; but the foreign demand, as shown by the exports, 
has increased still faster, that is, 33 per cent. The average crop is now 2,700,1100 bales, and all 
the rest of the world cannot sell 500,000 bales. In Great Britain, 4 millions of persons live by the 



20 
i 

manufacture of cotton, 2 millions more in Europe,, and 1 million in the free States — in all 7 mil- 
lions of people, whose daily bread is diminished or increased by the supply of cotton from the 
slave States. England has imported annually for the last five years, from countries other than the 
United States, 322,861 bales, which is 60,000 less than the average of the preceding five years. 
The imports from India, which, it was pretended at one time, would ruin our market, have de- 
clined from 274,000 bales in 1841, to 200,000 in 1849. Egypt supplied more than 80,000 bales 
in 1845, and now does not send a third of that quantity. The Southern States are the only part 
of the world where the growth of cotton is extending, and here the average increase of the crop 
is not over 80,000 bales a year. So great has been the decline of the cotton crop in other coun- 
tries, that the English supply from all quarters, available for home consumption, including our 
slave States, "has of late years fallen off at the rate of 1,000 bales a week, while our (the English) 
consumption has been increasing during the same period at the rate of 3,600 bales a week."* 

These facts, taken from the highest authority, offer the brightest prospect to the cotton planter. 
It appears that the English demand is outrunaing the supply at the rate of 239,000 bales per an- 
num, more than 13 per cent, on the present consumption. The slave States have not only to 
meet this increasing demand, but also to supply the growing consumption at home, in the North- 
ern Slates, and in continental Europe, which already uses one million of bales. It is hard 
to overrate the possible, and even probable, future demands of the market, if we consider 
the thousands of persons in Germany and Russia, who still use manufactures of flax, and 
who must ultimately adopt the cheaper fairies of cotton. The result must be a large in- 
crease of price, of which we already see the signs, for it is erroneous to attribute the present 
rise only to the short crop. The increase will be permanent, for it will be secured by our mo- 
nopoly of the production. In ordinary articles, when the demand outruns the supply, the very 
rise of price, which is the consequence, draws new capital and labor to the production, until the 
old relation of the supply to the demand is restored. The price of an ordinary article cannot 
therefore be permanently raised beyond the cost of production, including the average profits of in- 
dustry for the producer. But in regard to cotton, the case is very different. It is admitted that 
no other country can produce it of the best quality, and experience has abundantly proved, that 
neither cotton nor sugar, (we may add tobacco and coffee,) can be profitably raised on a 
large scale without slave labor. The cotion crop must therefore keep pace with our slave popu- 
lation, which already raises all it can pick ; and we accordingly find that the average rate of 
increase of both is just the same, a little over 3 per cent, a year. It is therefore impossible to 
increase the supply by a new influx of producers, as in common cases, and as the demand is 
increasing about 13 per cent, a year, the price must continue to rise, until its very rise checks 
the consumption. These facts promise an almost unbounded prosperity to the cotton planter, 
which will extend to all their fellow-citizens in the same happy confederacy. A vast Southern 
market will be opened for grain, sugar, tobacco, provisions, manufactures, and produce of every 
description. When this demand is added to the existing want6 of other countries, the profits oi 
the Virginia and Maryland planter will equal those of their more Southern brethren, and the 
slave-holding States, freed from a heavy burden of taxation, and relieved from the unnatural di- 
version of their trade, would be the garden spot of the world. The exports of cotton to the free 
States and other countries, cannot be less, in a few years, than 140 millions of dollars in value : 
(we venture to predict that, even in the present state of things, the exports of cotton to foreign 
countries will reach 80 millions this year, besides 500,000 bales, worth $23,750,000, kept a: 
home.) All this would form the aliment of a higher system of civilization than the world hat 
ever yet known. 

We shall say nothing of the mineral resources of the South, which are unsurpassed ; of he: 
gold, her copper, and her lead ; of her mmes of salt and iron, and her vast fields of coal ; w- 1 
shall pass over her numerous agricultural productions and fruits, many almost spontaneous. We 
might speak of the vine, which can be cultivated not only along the Ohio, but to still greater ad- 
vantage in the more Southern latitudes of Carolina, Alabama, and Texas. Nor shall we mention 
coffee, which it is tolerably certain might be raised wiih profit in the south of Florida, for the 
future annexation of Cuba would give us abundant supplies. The interesting experiments of Dr. 
Smith, in South Carolina, may perhaps make us independent of China for tea, and even enable U6 
to compete with her in other markets; while climate and social institutions will always forbid its 
cultivation north of Mason's and Dixon's line. We will pass at once to the consideration of the 
means of placing our productions in market. 

A large extent of sea coast not only improves the climate, but greatly increases the facilities for 
commerce. This was one of the chief physical causes of the early prosperity of the nations on 
the Mediterranean, especially in the peninsulas of Italy and Greece, and it has been no small 
element of England's power. The Southern States are eminently favored in this way. Their 
coast line on the Atlantic and the Gulf is 7,033 miles.t while the Northern States have only 



*The London Economist. This resolt is, of course, obtained by considering the stocks on hand in each year. 
|See Report of the Snpt. of the Coast Survey in Treasury Report, 1848-'49. 



21 

3,295. But to appreciate the full advantage of the South, we must include the islands and rivers, 
to the head of tide-water, which make her whole navigable coast-line, 22,701 miles, while the 
Northern is but 6,675. The very compact shape of the Southern States make this great line oi 
navigation available to nearly the whole country, while the reverse is the case at the North. The 
slaveholding States have an equal superiority in the extent of steam navigation on the western 
rivers. The 1,000 miles of the Ohio may be considered common to the two sections, and s:> 
may the 2,000 miles of the Mississippi, though 1,230 of these lie exclusively in the South, while 
some 300 more divide Missouri from Illinois, and little over 400 are wholly in the free State?. 
There are 2,655 miles of steam navigation on the Missouri and its tributaries, the most valuable 
part of which lies in a slave State, and as the whole debouches at St. Louis, that city commands 
all its commerce. On the other tributaries of the great " Father of waters," as well as oi the 
Ohio, there are 5,029 miles of steam navigation in the slave States, and only 2,300 in the free 
States. The whole commerce of the valley of the Mississippi, to which the greater part of the 
Northwestern States belongs, is naturally dependent on the South for an outlet, which the South 
would probably find it to her interest to permit the free States to use. There is a natural equity 
in the free navigation of rivers by all the riparian powers, which was acknowledged in the treaty 
of Vienna, and applied to the Rhine and Danube, as a great principle of European national law. 
The cities and countries at the outlets of such streams, gain the commercial command of all the 
country above, and, in case of war, a great military power. A large portion of the commerce of 
the free States in the northwest must always go to enrich New Orleans. The other part has to 
find its way to the seaboard by canals and railroads, at a cost of 4 per cent, in tolls, while a fourth 
part, probably of Northern commerce, has to pass through Southern States. There is no part oi 
the South thus dependent on the North. 

It is true, that federal legislation has made a roundabout voyage by New York shorter for 
Southern trade than the straight course to Europe, but there is no part of the slave States whose 
natural port is not at home. Twc great lines of railroad will soon connect the Chesapeake bay 
with the valley of the Ohio and the Lakes. A third line will stretch through the southwest to 
Memphis, on the Mississippi, while a fourth will form a continuous line parallel to the coast from 
Baltimore and Richmond, through Columbia and Atlanta, to Natchez, with numerous lateral feed- 
ers from the Piedmont vallies. Western commerce can reach the Atlantic by these Southern 
lines more quickly than by the Northern, and without any interruption from ice and snow in 
winter. They will concentrate a vast trade at Norfolk, Charleston, and Savannah. Nothing is 
wanting but the capital to complete their improvements, which the restoration of our natural 
commerce would at once supply. The same causes which have substituted steam for sails in in- 
land navigation— the need for greater speed and certainty in the returns— will complete the 
change on^the ocean, and give steamships the preference for commerce as well as passengers. 
We' find that the custom-house returns show that the proportion of the imports into Boston, 
brought in steamers, is rapidly increasing. Swift steam-vessels are now building in England to 
be employed in the fereign grain trade.* 

This change must be of great advantage to Norfolk and Charleston, for the calms, which make 
Southern latitudes unfavorable for a sail voyage to Europe, will make them so much the better 
for steam. The trade in Indian corn and Southern wheat (which, as we have seen, is drier, 
more nutritious, and better fitted for exportation than the Northern) will be greatly augmented. 
The mouth of the Chesapeake is naturally a better position for a great city than the mouth o: 
the Hudson. That beautiful bay, having all the advantages of a sea, without its storms, has 4,010 
miles of tidewater shores, of which 2,373 miles are in navigable rivers— more than double the 
number in the States north of it. This noble system of rivers and bays may be said to be free from 
ice all the year, and waters one of the most highly favored countries in the world, both in the 
temperate climate, the rich and easily improved soil, and the vauiety of its productions. Add to 
this all the country that may be more readily connected by artificial communications with this 
point than any other, and there is no site on the Atlantic coast which should naturally command 
a larger commerce than Norfolk. We have explained the causes which have prevented the 
development of these resources, but once remove the burdens, and restore Southern capital to 
its producers, and the shipping of New York would soon whiten Hampton Roads, and her pa- 
laces embellish the shores of the Chesapeake. Charleston is connected with the same lines o: 
railroad, and the cotton trade gives her equal or superior advantages. Mobile awaits but the 
loosening of her shackles to stretch an iron road to the Ohio ; and who can predict the greatness 
of New Orleans, at the mouth of the Mississippi valley, with its area of a million of square 
miles, its steam navigation of 16,674 miles, and its commerce, already valued at $200,000,000 ! 
What a position for that, which has ever been the most lucrative commerce of tire world— (he 
exchange of the productions of temperate and highly civilized countries for the growth of tropi- 
cal climates, and less advanced societies ! The Gulf of Mexico would be commanded by the 
slave States, and they would want nothing but Cuba to make it a Southern Lake. How long 



* Blackwood's Magazine, January, 1850. 



22 

would they want that? Peaceable annexation would at once follow its independence of Spain, 
and that could not be delayed long after the separation of the North and the South. There is 
no just reason why England should desire to prevent its annexation now ; and, in the event of 
a dissolution of the Union, it would be her interest to strengthen us, and she would be bound 
to the Southern alliance by natural ties, and would have natural causes of hostility to the North. 
The dependence of four millions of her people on the South for cotton, and of many more for 
food, would give the slave States a powerful hold upon the good will of her Government — a 
hold that would strengthen with every year. No such ties would bind England to the free 
States. Producers of the same articles, and rivals in manufacturing industry, their commerce 
would be small, and their interests adverse. This hostile feeling wo aid be aggravated by a desire 
to possess Canada on the one hand, and a jealousy of its loss on the other. In any actual con- 
test of arms, the North would be particularly weak. Our Engineer department says that " It 
must be admitted that the British possess the military command of Lake Ontario."* This would 
facilitate the execution of the fine strategic design, which they failed to accomplish in the Revo- 
lution — to hold the line of the Hudson, and isolate New England from the other States. The 
Welland canal gives England the power of throwing vast supplies of every kind from Lake On- 
tario, where she has the command upon the upper Lakes, and thus cutting off the western com- 
merce from New York. It also places her in a position to strike at the line uniting the Eastern 
and Western free States, which offers peculiar advantages to a foe from either the North or 
the South. From Lake Erie to Pittsburg is little over one hundred miles, and might easily be 
held by an enemy, who had resources either on the Lakes, or in Maryland and Virginia. The 
Northern States might be thus completely sundered. The Northwestern States, commercially, 
belong rather to the South than the North, and their connection with the Eastern States would 
not be very strong. Events may easily be imagined which would separate a Northern Confede- 
racy into two parts, the one leaning towards the South, and the other relying on a Canadian 
connection ; and, in estimating the relative capacity of such a confederacy for war, we must re- 
member that the States, which would compose it, now owe one hundred and ten millions of dol- 
lars, while the Southern States owe only sixty millions. 

When we consider all these facts, can we doubt that the free States will acknowledge the 
equality of the South, rather than return to their natural poverty and weakness by dissolving the 
Union ? — that Union to which we of the South are so devotedly attached, and to whose preser- 
vation we are willing to sacrifice every thing but our honor. 

We have seen that the North possesses none of the material elements of greatness, in which 
the South abounds, whether we regard the productions of the soil, the access to the markets of 
the world, or the capacity of military defence. While the slave States produce nearly every 
thing within themselves, the free States will soon depend on them even for food, as they now do 
for rice, sugar, tobacbo, and cotton — the employment of their ships in Southern commerce, the 
employment of their labor in the manufacture ef Southern cotton, and all that they can purchase 
of other countries with the fabrics of that great Southern staple. We have shown that the 
price of that staple must be permanently raised ; how would the manufacturing industry of the 
free States stand this rise, if their taxes were raised by a dissolution of the Union, and how would 
their laborers subsist under this new burden, if they at once lost the employment afforded by the 
free use of one hundred and forty millions of Southern capital, and the disbursement of twenty 
millions of Southern taxes? The answer to this question will bring us to the last view we shall 
present of our subject, and will show that the Union has, in truth, inestimable worth for the 
North. It defies all the powers of figures to calculate the value to the free Stales of the conserva- 
tive influence of the South upon their social organization. 

The great sore of modern society is the war between capital and labor. The fruits of any en- 
terprise of industry ha' r e to repay all the wages of the labor employed in it, and the remainder is 
the profit of capital. Every man knows that the profit he can make on any undertaking depends 
upon the expenses, and that the chief part of these is the hire of the necessary labor. The 
cheaper he can get that, the more clear gain is left him. It is obvious, upon this statement, that 
the lower the wages, the higher are the profits, and it is the interest of capital to reduce them to 
the lowest point, as it is of labor to reduce the profits. Free competition is continually bringing 
down the prices of the productions of industry, and the capitalist has to meet this effect by les- 
sening lhe cost of production, and to lower the wages is one of the readiest ways to accomplish 
this end. It is true, that laws of nature, if left uninterrupted, will adjust the shares of wages and 
profits in a certain ratio to each other, and in a young and flourishing country, where every ad- 
dition to the stock of capital and labor employed is attended by a proportional or greater increase 
of the gross returns, these shares will continue the same, or even increase. 

In such a case, the natural opposition of interest between the laborer and capitalist is not felt ; 
but the moment any cause interrupts the operation of these natural laws, or diminishes the pro- 
ductiveness of the new labor annually brought into action, one or both must dimmish, for the 

* 19 Ex. Doc. 1847-8, p. 50. 



23 

whole returns to be divided are le9s in proportion to the number of those who are to receive. 
Each will try to get the most he can, and throw the whole loss upon the other ; and in this strife, 
capital has an immense advantage. It can easily be transferred from less to more profitable em- 
ployments, and from countries where its rewards are low to those where they are high. We have 
seen an example of this operation in the steady flow of capital from Europe to this country. Labor 
has no such facility ; no freight is so costly, as that of man. Poverty and ignorance combine with 
local affections and habits to tie the laborer to his native district, and even to the employment, to 
which he has been trained. Emigration is the exception, not the rule ; it is only for the com- 
paratively well off— those who have something— not for the countless crowd of poor, who live by 
their daily toil, Hence the supply of labor remains steady, while the demand — that is, the supply 
of capital— is readily reditced, and profits are easily increased at the expense of wages. The same 
result is produced by other yet more inevitable causes ; the very diminution of the returns of indus- 
try retards the rate at which capital can accumulate. Meantime population continues to increase 
at its former rate, and with it the supply of labor, for the fall in wages, which must follow, can- 
not check the increase of population, except by pinching them with the want of subsistence ; but 
it is a slow and uncertain check, even in that way. It will have no such effect where the popu- 
lation is content to live upon an inferior kind of food— upon potatoes instead of corn, as has been 
the case in Ireland, and even in the Eastern free States. No people breed faster than these potatoe 
eaters. The necessary fall in wages then goes on with accelerated velocity, as population outruns 
capital in its increase, and begins to press upon the means of subsistence. The result is before us 
in the starving laborers of Europe, where the wages of a week's labor, for 14 hours a day, are often 
only 36 cents a week! In 1842, in Manchester, 2,000 families, 8,136 persons, were reduced 
to this standard of subsistence ; and in other years their condition has been still wore ! We have 
before alluded to the signs, that the North is not very far distant from this pressure of population 
upon the means ot living, which she is obliged ultimately to reach. Statistics show a gradual but 
certain decline in the wages of labor in the older parts of the free States." The destitution of the 
poor in the Northern cities is annually increasing, and there has been a frightful growth of pau- 
perism. Mr. Fisher says that, in Massachusetts — the model State ! — it reaches 1 in 20. In Eng- 
land it is but double, 1 in 10. Meat is no longer the daily food of the Eastern laborer ; and one 
of the answers from Maine to the Treasury circular in 1845, says that an able bodied man cannot 
possibly support himself and his wife by agricultural labor! We have seen that the supply of 
food was already deficient in the Eastern States, and that in Ohio it had reached its maximum 
point ; in orher words that, every future increase would be attended with more than a proportional 
increase of cost. Add to this the growing disposition of Northern population to desert agricul- 
tural employments, which must be partly due to their diminished returns, its tendency to concen- 
trate in towns and factories, its rapid rate of natural increase, and its si ill greater increase by emi- 
gration from abroad, and we can have, no doubt that Northern laborers are increasing faster than 
Northern capital. Hence a pressure upon the means of subsistence, and a still greater fall in 
wages cannot be far off. It would be heavy and instantaneous where the Union dissolved, for that 
event would, as we have shown, not only throw 20 millions of dollars of new taxes upon the 
North, but would withdraw 140 millions of capital, which now employs her labor. This loss 
would fall chiefly, it not entirely, upon wages. The Northern capitalist would not submit to a 
decrease of profit, but would send a part of his capital to the South, where profits were higher, 
until he had reduced wages at home to a point, which would leave him nearly as much clear gain 
on his industry as nefore. He would in this way escape the whole burden of the new taxes, and 
throw it upoq iubof. ' 

In iact. in all old communities, we find that the soils, which had been most fertile when virgin 
and fresh, are exhausted by continual cultivation ; and every year the want of food forces a resort 
to lands which wtse at first, rejected as too poor. The returns of agriculture are therefore subject 
to a steady and natural decline, which cannot be arrested except by the means of improvement, 
which modern science has discovered. The cultivation of the earth is rapidly assuming a new and 
scientific character ; it is becoming almost a species of manufacturing industry. To be conducted 
to the best advantage, it will require the application ot comparatively large capitals, in draining, 
liming, sub-soiling, and all the modern elements of V high farming;" and it will demand the 
direction of superior minds to control and organise the labor, of which there must be a cerlahi and 
regular supply. This necessity is already felt in England. In the model county of Lincoln, the 
different operations of farming are let out by contract to gang masters, who have numbers of 
laborers, regular!] enrolled, ready to undertake any job that may be offered. These gangs are sent 
a considerable distance in wagons, and men, women, and children, separated from their homes and 
families, sleep all huddled together in barns, till the contract is completed. " V"! n agricnUwe 
thus pisses into the manufacturing state." as M. Leon Faucher, the late Minister of the Interior 
in France, says, "we must not be surprised at the effects of the transformation in tne servitude 
and demoralization of the laborers." Any real and extensive improvement of agriculture in France 
and the free States must be attended with similar consequences, for these requirements of scientific 
farming cannot be met, with due regard to the morals and comfort of the laborers, except in a 
slaveholding community. The slave feels all the wholesome influences of moral life, ne a r his 



24 

home, and beneath the guardian cnre of his master, while the owner can obtain all the efficiency 
of gang and factory organization, without any of its evils. Hence it is that the highest practical 
examples of agricultural science in the Union are to be found in the Southern States, despite all 
their burdens. We have seen what Mr. Solon Robinson says of the wheat culture in Virginia, 
and recent authentic statements have proved that grain crops are nowhere raised with more profit 
than in tidewater Virginia, where the slaves are most numerous. There is no farming country 
north of Virginia, which can compare with the valley of the James river for skill, extensive en- 
terprise, and success. If we go further South, Mr. Skinner says, that the rice plantations of Caro- 
lina are amongst the best models of agriculture in the world. Mr. Fleischman* says that it would 
astonish many a Northern farmer to behold the vast canals of the sugar planters, and the im- 
mense steam engines at work in draining them — canals which, " if joined together, would well 
deserve the name of a great national work of internal improvement, but executed without any 
assistance from the State." He " cannot describe his delight " at the perfection of the cultiva- 
tion and the beauty of the residences which line the banks of the lower Mississippi. All this is 
the work of slave institutions, where circumstances have afforded some compensation for the bur- 
dens of the Federal Government. And the 6lnves themselves live in a state of comfort — we had 
almost said of luxury — superior to many a Northern farmer. The free Stales have none of these 
advantages ; free labor is not capable of such an organization in agriculture, except by lowering 
its condition to the level of the degraded operatives of European factories ; and capital cannot 
be employed to the greatest profit on minute farms, whose holders have neither courage to risk it, 
credit Jo command it, nor skill to apply it. 

The combination of such causes has aggravated the war between labor and capital in the old 
countries, and especially in France, until it has brought about the late socialist upheaving of the 
very foundations of society. Hence we hear so much of " the right to labor," which means a 
right to better wages ; hence the war upon property, and law, and order, which threatens a 
•vorse than Vandal overthrow of European civilization. It is true that the remedy applied by the 
suffering laborer, increases the evil — that whatever weakens confidence in the right of property 
retards the increase of public wealth, and cuts off the very springs of that comfort and well-being 
which they would use violence to share. It is true, that the laboring class cannot hold the un- 
wonted power it may have seized ; that the triumph of to-day must be followed by the defeat of 
to-morrow, and that the February Saturnalia in the Tuilleries must be expiated by the June 
carnage in the streets. But when have the slaves of hunger ever listened to reason ? The 
laboring poor cannot but remember the wan faces of their shivering wives, the piteous plaints of 
their children begging for bread, when they see the costly fur, the dainty food, and luxuries of 
the rich. Their city palaces, and country villas, their " pride that apes humility " in Gothic cot- 
'nges, and model farms, but serve to make the garrets look more wretched, the fetid cellars 
darker and damper. The black mouldy loaf is worse than the crumbs which Lazarus may pick 
up at Dives' door. The stables, the very pig stye of the lord of the loom, is better than the 
aovel of his factory operative, who, like the prodigal son, would fain fill his belly with the husks 
of his lord's swine, but, unlike that son, there is no father to array him in purple and fine 
linen, and kill for him the fatted calf; he must toil for his bread by incessant labor, for 12 or 14 
Lours a day, and when strength and youth are wasted, and he is weak and weary, with sickness 
and premature old age, he is cast forth upon the cold charity of an almshouse. When the poor 
man sees all this, and thinks that his hands have worked to build up the wealth and luxury, 
which the rich exclusively enjoy, can we wonder that the thought eats into his heart, and goads 
him on to deeds of madness and violence ? So has it been ia Europe, and what security have 
the free States that the same inexorable fatality will not overtake them ? The South has the 
guaranty of negro slavery ; capitalist and laborer, master and slave, are indissolubly united in 
interest ; even if the owner cannot profitably employ and support the laborer, his interest prompts 
aim to transfer him by sale to those who can. In the South, society is divided into masters and 
slaves ; at the North, into rich and poor ; and what shall protect her people from the social war, 
which that division has begotten in the history of every similar community ? The dark cloud 
lowers upon their horizon ; its low mutterings are already heard. Every year a larger number is 
supported by the alms of the State ; the criminal statistics show a frightful increase of crime, 
especially in offences against property ; the right to gratuitous education by the fotced taxes of 
the property holder is already a part of the public law, and societies are formed to establish a 
similar right to an equal division of lands. They declare that the earth is the gift of God for 
the common use — that no one has a right to monopolise it for himself and his posterity — and 
that every man has a natural claim to an equal share in its enjoyment. The next step is to 
deny the right to transmit any kind of property by will, or by inheritance, and to force a gene- 
ral re-division in every generation, if not an entire community of ownership. These societies 
are numerous; they hold National Conventions, and have organs, avowed and secret, in the 
newspaper press. Long leases are distrusted at the North, for there is danger that the tenants 



Patent Office Report, 1848. 



25 

will refuse to surrender at their close. Whole counties have united in refusing to pay rents, 
which the courts decided were justly due, and the officers of the law, while in the execution of its 
mandates, have been deliberately murdered. And these violators of the rights of property and 
life, of the laws of God and man, had strength enough to elect a Governor, whom they could 
force to pardon the convicted murderers ! So strong is the agrarian spirit, that so eminent a man 
as Mr. Webster is forced to conciliate it by proposing in solemn Senate to confiscate the public 
lands, by giving a quarter section to every free while male, native and foreign, who may choose 
to enter upon them. To meet all these dangers the free States have no security out of the Union ; 
once left to themselves, their perils would increase ten-fold. For it is essential to the public wel- 
fare, to the laborers and the poor themselves, that Government should be able to protect all the 
rights of property. No matter what the sufferings of the laboring class, they wculd be doubled 
and tripled by the insecurity of private rights. In England, this ability in Government has been 
preserved by a highly aristocratic constitution, both social and political ; but in France, the tide 
has swept away Government after Government, like the waves of the sea ; one dictatorship has 
followed another, now an Emperor, now a King, now the bourgeois capitalists, and now mere 
numbers, all equally unstable. And all this despite the fact France has been, under all dynasties, 
since the first Revolution, eminently democratic in her civil laws! The reason is not hard to 
discover. At the bottom of all French politics, and the same applies with equal truth to the free 
States of the North, lies the idea that might makes right; in other words, that a majority of mere 
numbers has a natural, indefeasible, and absolute right to govern the minority. No matter what 
the injustice and oppression of the rule, the minority has no remedy, short of civil war. This 
theory acknowledges what it calls the right of revolution in extreme cases ; but that right can only 
be established and legitimated by the success which proves the minority to be the strongest party, 
and thus converts it into a majority ; which brings us back to the starting-place, that might makes 
right. All the free States, like France, are organized upon this principle of a majority's un- 
limited right to rule ; their idea of a perfect State is a highly centralized, consolidated Govern- 
ment, where the will of the greater number may be expressed and executed with the greatest 
rapidity and certainty. Such a Government does not confine itself to the external relations of 
the State, and the protection of life and property at home ; but it invades the interior of the 
family; it destroys the unity of married life by creating separate interests in the parties; it robs 
parents of the education of their children, so as to destroy individuality of character, and train 
and prune them to the same moral aud mental stature. The majority of numbers is more pow- 
erful than the Czar, because it is itseU physical might; it is more grinding in its tyranny,because 
it has less feeling of personal responsibility, and its Argus eyes can search every corner of the 
country ; its infallibility is less open to attack than the Pope's, because it is, itself, public opin- 
ion. Like other despots, it never hears the truth ; its ears are trained to feed upon a fulsome 
flattery; and throngs of fawning courtiers are ready to call its unbridled passions, greatness, and 
its lavish expenditure of the taxes, wrung from the minority, goodness. The love of true liberty, 
and manly independence of thought cannot flourish in such a community ; the greediness of 
office, and the love of power, take their place; there is an eager courting of popular favor, a fever- 
ish fear of differing in opinion from the majority, a making haste to leave the few, and join the 
many. Hence the°politicians of the free States have always been wanting in the comprehensive 
views, necessary to found Governments or parties, and in the moral courage, the energy, and ad- 
ministrative talent, requisite to conduct them with success. This is acknowledged by Theodore 
Parker, one of the best writers of New England, in his discourse on the death of John Quincy 
Adams', and he attributed the superiority of Southern statesmen, in this respect, to their slave 
institutions. These accustom them early to deal with men, and they learn to act " as those 
having authority;" the management of the little commonwealth of the plantation is an excellent 
training for the administration of a larger State. Hence it is that the North has always had to 
look to the South for Generals and Presidents. No one will deny that this, like all general rules, 
has had brilliant exceptions, especially in military life, where the nature of the calling, and the 
tenure of the office beget more independence of character. But the North has never pro- 
duced a statesman, who has durably stamped the impress of his mind upon the legislation of the 
country, and made his thought, the thought of his own generation, and of posterity. There is no 
great measure of public policy, which was originated by a Northern lawgiver. Not even such 
men as Adams, or Webster, have been able to associate their names with the authorship, or 
development, of any far-reaching, abiding acts of legislation. The union of wisdom, in the high- 
est scripture sense, with moral and physical boldness, with firmness and prudence, which made 
Washington the leader of our Revolutionary armies, and the appropriate guardian of our infant 
federation, was eminently characteristic of the Southerner and the slaveholder; it was the degree 
only, not the kind, that were miraculous. Such were the chief leaders of the Convention, the 
men to whose suggestions the Constitution owes its essential features — Madison and Mason, 
Randolph and Pinkney, all of the South. The founders of the two great parties were neither 
from the North ; Hamilton was a West Indian, and Jefferson, who breathed his soul into the 
Republican party, and Madison, who gave it a shape, were both Virginians. In the war of 1812, 
two Virginians, Scott and Harrison, drove back our foes in the North, while a Carolinian led the 



26 

Southern nfles to victory at New Orleans. All the great measures which have agitated the pre- 
sent <reneraiion, the Bank, and the Independent Treasury, the Internal Improvement system, the 
American system, and free trade, have been brought forth or shaped by the minds of a Calhoun 
or a Clay, or carried into practice by the iron will of a Jackson. The only N ortbem Presidents 
we have ever tried have been failures. The elder Adams, who came into power on the popular- 
ity of Washington, in two years broke down, and every vestige of his adminisi ration was swept 
away by the popular voice. His son fared no better, and Van Buren, who mistook cunning for 
wisdom, was a politician instead of a statesman. The prestige of Jackson's favor could elect 
him, but nothing could save him after a single trial. 

Whatever of greatness our country has attained has been chiefly due to the administrative tal- 
ent of Southern men, and above all to the Southern vote, which, while it was yet strong enough to 
be heard, restrained the disposition of the North to convert this Federal Unioo into a grand con- 
solidated State, on the French model, where the numerical majority might have absolute sway. 
If the free States were to form a separate confederacy, it would soon assume this character. The 
measures which, as a section, they have advocated in the present Union, all have that tendency. 
The forms of their State governments— their political theories — all conspire to make such a result 
certain. The small States would be deprived of their equal vote in the Senate, and speedily ab- 
sorbed by their more powerful neighbors. All the proper work of the several State Legislatures, 
as well as of private enterprise, would be thrown on the central government; the States would 
become mere provinces, and Congress a National Assembly. In such a State, mere would be no 
safety for property. The number of those Who want property is always greater than that of those 
who have it — the poor more numerous than the rich ; and they will certainly use their acknowl- 
edged sovereign right, as a majority, to gratify that want, and take what they please. The 
Northern plan of meeting this danger has ever been to create a strong moneyed interest by class 
legislation, by large Government expenditures, and by patronage. Northern statesmen know 
that the arh-tocracy of birth is impossible; they hope to substitute the aristocracy of money b.y 
means of the funding and paper system, and by the yei more potent empire of the manufacturing 
system. In other words, the plan is to govern the masses by the power of money and corruption. 
The evil day may be thus delayed, but the remedy increases the inequaliiy of fortunes and the 
difficulties ot the laboring poor. Their sufferings are aggravated and their Character degraded ; 
and when the outbreak comes— as come it ultimately must, with the accumulated force of pent up 
wa ters — it is the outbreak, not of men, but of demons. France is the living and unhappy proof 
of all our reasonings. The reaction against the tyranny of the numerical majority, as public 
opinion produces the multitude of " false doctrines, heresies, and schisms," the growing fidelity, 
the Grahamites and Fourierites, the Mormonism and Millerism, and all those mild - in s of 
fanaticism, to which the people of the free States are so prone, but which cannot live beneath our 
Southern sun. The reaction against the tyranny of the numerical majority, as government, be- 
gets the proclivity to mobs and tumults, the instability of all constitutions and laws, which we 
see manifesting itself in the free States. The only rebellion ever known in the United States 
against the exercise of undisputed constitutional authority was in Pennsy.vania. In Rhode 
Island, the Dorrites would have waged civil war, (if their leader's courage had not failed him at 
the crisis,) not for any great principle, but merely to determine, by a trial of actual physical 
force— a most rational and logical test — which party was the sovereign numerical majority. 
Federal authority had to be invoked ; when has a Southern State ever had to call in foi^ign aid 
to settle her domestic difficulties ? The Legislature at Harrisburg had to be brought to order by a 
military force ; and the Senate of Ohio, after one or two hundred ballotings lately elected a 
Speaker, who has since been forced to resign for bargain and corruption ; the State was near being 
thrown into an anarchy last year by the inability of the Legislature to determine who were 
its members ! In the chief cities, mobs dispute the right of private citizens to consult 'lieir own 
taste in a play aclor; they set fire to convents of helpless females, and they tear down the house 
of God, because it shelters the wretched emigrant from their brutal fury. And yet whe n a oi lzen 
soldier has the nerve to fire upon them and vindicate the majesty of the law, — an example ot moral 
courage, alas! too seldom found at the North, — instead of receiving the thanks of the whole com- 
munity, his house is the mark of the midnight incendiary, and all the avenues of public honor are 
forever closed to his approach. 

From all these dangers, t^e conservative influence of the South has hitherto preserved the free 
States. Her tributes of slave-grown wealth have kept up the wages of their labor and the profits 
of their capital, have delayed the war between rich and poor, and soothed the deep-seated sore — 
the immediciibile vulnus — in their social organization, which nothing can heal. So long as the 
free States suffer the Union to endure, so long will the South continue her good offices ; so long 
will she be ready to extend her aid, through ihe Federal authority to restrain her Dorrites and 
her socialists, her anti-renters and her mobs. For the conservative character -of the Union 
rests upon ihe slaveholding States. With them, a very different idea of government prevails. 
They believe that the sovereignty rests with the people, not collectively, but individually. 
As the Union is a federation of sovereign States, with their several reserved rights, so in their 
eyes, is each State a federation of sovereign individuals, (or families if you will,) with their 



27 

reserved rights. In their belief, there are institutions and rights, derived throngn the laws of nature., 
from God alone, which are independent of, and prior to, all government. Such are the relations 
of parent and child, of husband and wife, of master and slave, and the right to property, which all 
goto make up the great corner-stone of the social edifice — the family. To preserve these institu- 
tions in all their incidents, and all their derivative rights, is the chief duty of government, which 
it cannot fiulfil without such an organization, as will give a full and fair voice to every interest and 
every class, and confer upon each a veto upon the assault of the others, so that legislation shail 
not be the voice of mere numbers, but a compromise between the majority and the minority — not 
merely the -vill of the greater number, but the resultant of the wills of all. Such a government 
rests its authority, not upon force, but upon the universal consent; there is nc despotic public 
opinion to stifle freedom of thought ; no King Numbers to flatter; no rapacious majority can use 
the forms of law to gratify its ravenings for plunder, but every class has to consult the interests of 
others, without whom it cannot act, as well as its own ; and the people are traine' 1 up to the 
statesmanlike practice of government in the spirit of union and harmony. The body politic be- 
comes instinct with life and healthy vigor. Public opinion works in its true calling, as the mode- 
rator, not the silencer of individual differences. For such an organization, the Southern States 
have peculiar and well nigh indispensable advantages in their slave institutions, which forever 
obliterate the division between labor and capital. The devotion of so large a portion of their sur- 
face to cotton, sugar, and tobacco, places, at an almost infinite distance, the day when population 
will press upon the supply of food, for while the increase of its numbers is in proportion only to 
the relatively small area that produces grain, the other lands furnish an inexhaustible resource to 
fall back upon in case of an insufficiency ol that production. 

When we regard the powerful position in the world, which the command of the greet staple of 
cotton confers upon the slave States, their numerous natural advantages in climate and produc- 
tions, their situation midway in the new hemisphere, holding the outlets >f Northern commerce, 
and the approaches to South America and the Pacific, through the Gulf, we cannot forbear think- 
ing that they are destined to play a first part in the history of the world, and discerning the fin- 
ger of God in their stability, while thrones and democracies are tottering around them. Divine 
Providence, for its own high and inscrutable purposes, has rescued m< j than three millions of 
human beings from the hardships of a savage state, and placed them in a condition of greater 
comfort than any other laboring class in the world ; it has delivered (hem from the barbarous 
idolatries of Africa, and brought them within the blessings covenanted to believers in Christ. At 
the same time.it has provided the whites of the Anglo-Norman race in the Southern States with 
the necessary means of unexampled prosperity, with that slave labor, without which, as a gene- 
ral rule, no colinization in a new country ever has, or ever will thrive, and grow rapidly ; it has 
given them a distinct and inferior race to fill a position equal to its highest capacity, which, in 
less fortunate couiiiries, is occupied by the whites themselves. A lan_e class — often the largest 
class — living from day to day by the daily labor of their hands, exists, and must ex:;', in every 
country. & id it is impossible, as a general thing, for the persons of that class to h ve time, or 
even inclination, for much mental improvement. The force ot peculia' genius may rai.-e one in 
ten thousand to a higher place in society, but such cases become more and more i frequent, as 
wages diminish vvith the progress of population, and the care of providing food grows uiore en- 
grossing. The whole question, therefore, resolves itself into this: Shall the laboring class be of 
an inferior rac •■, so controlled and directed by the superior minds of the whites, as continually to 
progress in material, and moral well being, far beyond any point it has ever shown a power of at- 
taining in freedom ! — or shall that laboring class he of whites and equals, capable ot becoming 
" gods, as one of us," and yet condemned to a slow, but sure, increas i of want an ' poverty — 
the slaves o. society instead of individuals — isolated from their employi rs by the invisibly, but im- 
passible, Darners of custom, aliens from tneir hearts, and utterly separated in maom rs, informa- 
tion, opinions, and tastes? Between the Southern master and his sla -e, ther is a lei t -feeling 
in sorrows and jrvs, a mutual dependence and affection, which calls into play ah (he finer feel- 
ings of man's nature. What of all this is there between the Northern capitalist and bis day la- 
borer ? They have not known each other from infancy, nor been partners through good and 
through ill fortune. Perhaps the tide of emigration brought them together yesterdaj nd will 
hurry them apart to-morrow. The laborer does not look to his employer is his natural protector 
against the injustice of the powerful, or as his refuge in sickness, or in old age. He must find 
that in 'ie almshouse. If the laborer is a factory operative — perhaps girl, or evi i a c!:ild, for 
in manufacturing i icieties the children of the poor never know the plays or freedom oi child- 
hood — he is regarded as but a part of the loom he attends to. Factory labor be< a more and 
more divided, the employments more and more monotonous with each improveme nacbjne- 

ry. There is none of that variety of occupation, and those frequent calls upon e discretion 
and inte'i ,ce of the laborer, which make the work on a plantation in the South at once the 
most improving, the healthiest, and the most delightful species of manual labor. The factory 
operative, on the contrary, is chained to some single minute employment, which must be repeat- 
ed thousands of times without the least variation. Nothing worse for the intellect can be im- 
agined. 



28 

Idiocy and insanity multiply nnder their influences. In 1840, while the proportion of idiots 
and insane, to the whole population, was only 1 in 1,100 in the slave States, it was 1 in 900 in 
all the free States, and as much as 1 in 630 in New England alone. The effects of factory life 
on health are quite as bad. The cotton factories, the dyeing and bleaching factories, are hot- 
beds of consumption and disease of the lungs. At Sheffield, a dry-grinder, no matter how vi- 
gorous his constitution, is never known to live beyond the fat-d age of thirty-five. In Massa- 
chusetts, according to her own statistics, factories shorten the life of the operative one-third ! 
According to the evidence before the committee of the House of Commons, it has taken but thir- 
ty-two years to change the operatives of Manchester from a race more vigorous than those of 
New England now are — a well fed, well clothed, moral population — into demoralized, enerva- 
ted, feeble beings. As one of the witnesses says, " their life has been passed in turning the 
mule-jenny ; their minds have weakened and withered like a tree." How many years will it 
require to produce these effects in the North, when the span of man's life is already so much 
shortened? The very severity of the labor undermines the constitution. What wears out the 
human body is not the greatness of any exertion, but its duration. But the spinner has to 
move silently from one machine to another for twelve or fourteen hours a day, the attention never 
zo flag, the muscles never to rest. It has been calculated that the factory girl walks in this way 
twenty miles a day ! The system is equally pernicious for the morals. We always find, first, 
illegitimate births, and then prostitution, as well as drunkenness and crime, increase in great 
manufacturing districts. How should it be otherwise, when the family is broken up and the fac- 
tory boarding-house substituted in its place ; when children and girls are separated from their 
parents at the most critical period of life, crowded in heated work-rooms with a promiscuous herd 
of strangers, and lost to all the conservative influences of home ? In what regard is such a con- 
dition of labor superior to Southern slavery ? Let the free States begin within their own borders ; 
iet them place their white laborers in as good a condition, moral and physical, as the negroes, and 
then they may talk to us. The increasing hosts who live by toil in factories, the paupers who 
belong to the State, and the still greater number, who drag out a wretched existence in the crowd- 
ed haunts of want and vice in their great cities, form more than an offset to any thing that can 
be said of negro slavery. We have no patience with this meddling philanthropy, which does not 
take the beam out of its own eye, before it pulls the mote out of its brother's at the imminent risk 
of his eyesight; whose charity is all lor show, and never grows warm except for objects at a dis- 
tance ; which overlooks want and misery at its own gate, in its eagerness to reform countries it 
has never seen, and institutions it cannot understand. It is the crying vice of our age ; this de- 
sire to attend to evety body's business but our own, to perform any duties but those that 'lie im- 
mediately before us. Instead of making the most of our opportunities, we waste our time in vain 
wishes that the opportunities were greater. The great duty is to improve to the utmost of our 
abilities the condition in which it has pleased God to place us, and therewith to be content. 

But this does not suit the ideas of our Northern brethren. They must make anew all the work 
of creation. Divine Providence instituted the relation of master and slave ; but it is offensive 
to their finer notions of justice, and inconsistent with that cardinal principle, " that all men are 
created equal." Therefore they pronounce it " infamous," and " a crime against humanity ;" and 
it must be abolished, either directly, or indirectly, " by preventing its extension, localizing and dis- 
couraging it." The high civilization that accompanies it, all its advantages to both parties must 
be sacrificed, and both thrown upon the evils of a future that is present in St. Domingo and Ja- 
maica. God instituted marriage ; he decreed " that man and woman should be one flesh, and 
that the man should be lord over the woman." But our Northern philanthropists have discovered 
that this is all wrong ; " that men were created equal," therefore the women shall vote, as in New 
Jersey ; she shall no longer be one with the man, nor shall he be her lord. The wise old com- 
mon law carried out into practice the Divine iustitution, and produced the finest race of matrons 
and of maidens, the world has ever seen ; but the Northern lawgivers prefer the law which was 
the offspring of the corruptions of hr athen and imperial Rome ; they divide the household into 
separate interests ; the domestic hearth is no longer a common property to the family. The con- 
sequences are what they were in Rome — what they are in Italy and Germany and in France, 
where the illegitimate births are 1 in 15. The sanctity of marriage is gone ; it becomes in prac- 
tice, as in theory of law, a mere civil tie . The touching promises to cleave together " for better, 
for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us 
part," is wholly forgotten. Divorces multiply, till the dockets of the courts are so crowded with 
applications for them, as was the case in Hamilton county, Ohio, last year, that ah other business 
is impeded. God created the relation of parent and child— the child to honor and the parent to 
educate and train up in the way he should go ; but it has been determined in the North that the 
State is the best guardian of the child, and some of the fanatics there contend that, upon the same 
principles of equality, the relation is altogether obsolete. Certainly the desecration of marriage 
ties is the best way to undermine it, and assimilate their country to the great French model, where 
1 person in 32 is a foundling, and has no parent but the State — where there are one million of 
human beings who have never known a father or mother, brethren or kindred! This must be 
the beau ideal of socialist philanthropy. Yet there is one of the Divine ordinances to which the 



29 

Northern capitalists would fain hold fast— and that is— the right to property. But your true 
philanthropist is a relentless logician, and after destroying all family ties, he will not spare what 
is their less valuable offspring. " All men are created equal," he eays, and equal rights to all the 
goods of this life make a part of this natural equality. Man bring9 nothing into this world, and 
he can carry nothing out. Away with wills and inheritances, of that to which there is no natu- 
ral right, which we did not hold before our birth, and cannot enjoy after our death. He would 
proclaim a year of jubilee every generation — a wiping out of old scores — all property thrown into 
a hotch-potch, and a general re-division, to conform to man's natural equality. But perhaps 
when these Free State philanthropists have reformed the work of God, and corrected what they 
consider the foolishness of Providence, they may find that a yet greater evil is left untouched — 
the presumptuous sinfulness of their own hearts. 

The. South indulges in no such follies. She understands her condition and her duties; she 
means to employ all the talents God has given her in improving the former, and in fulfilling the 
latter. She is satisfied with her institutions, and she desires no change. She only asks to be 
allowed in peace 10 work out all the good of which they are capable, and to achieve the high 
destiny which lies before her. But to this end, she must have guaranties of present and future 
equality of political power, so as to protect her interests, and above all maintain her rights and 
her honor. To lose these would be to lose her self-respect, to be false to her old renown, to 
abandon her lofty calling, and the future of ^lory to which it leads. If the North wishes to dis- 
solve the Union, let hev perist in aggressions, which fulfil no holy purpose, and minister no sub- 
stantial gratification to selfishness. But if she really deems it invaluable for the tide of Southern 
wealth to- pour into her lap, and the conservative influence it wields over her elements of social 
discord, let her pause before it is too late. The South loves the equal Union of our forefathers 
for its historic associations, and the world-wide glory of its stars and stripes. But she will not 
tamely submit to see her stars changed into satellites. She wishes to preserve the Union ; but in 
any event, come weal, come woe, her course ia fixed. She has cast the die — she has past the 
Rubicon, and no power may stay her onward march to Equality or Independence. 



30 



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